On Monday, French novelist Clara Dupond-Monod won the 2021 French Fiction Femina Prize for her work “Adaptation.” The foreign prize was awarded to the Turkish novelist Ahmed Altan.
Clara Dupond-Monod, Landerneau Reader Award winner, editor and journalist, won a new award in less than a week. Femina began on Monday, October 25. The literary prize season kicked off by selecting writers who were “adapted” (stock version), and the foreign prize was awarded to Turk Ahmet Altan, who won the prize. The author is a novel written in prison.
At the meeting held at the Carnavalet Museum in Paris, the only female jury selected the winner with 6 votes in the eighth round, while Thomas B. Reverdy’s “Climax” (Flammarion) received 5 votes.
The 48-year-old editor and journalist Clara Dupont-Monod won the Landnor Reader Award a week ago for this novel about children with disabilities and their siblings.
This award, “I want to dedicate it to all different people, they are still 12 million in France, as well as all their brothers and sisters, all those who take care of them,” she commented to the media. “When the jury said: We have to adapt to an inappropriate person, we said to ourselves that we almost won.”
The author of the editor’s warning said she was surprised by the news. “I didn’t understand it for a while. It was very touching: it surpassed the book, it surpassed the award, and this is what moved me,” she explained.
The Femina Prize is the first prize in the Fall Literary Awards, before the Medici Prize on Tuesday, the French Academy Rome Grand Prix on Thursday, and the Gungur and Reynolds Prizes on November 3rd.
The Femina Prize for foreign novels was awarded to Ahmet Altan, whose work “Actes Sud” (Mrs. Hayat) is a novel written in prison and has not yet been published in its original language. He won by eight votes in the first round.
The young narrator fell in love with this older lady. He wrote: “Strictly speaking, she is not beautiful, but she has something more attractive than beauty, a vibrant light.”
Picasso, 140 years old
The 71-year-old writer and journalist was convicted of participating in an attempted coup in 2016 and was released from prison in April. He firmly denied that he could not leave his country.
“Unfortunately, I cannot be with you today (…) I am forbidden to travel outside of Turkey”, he thanked the jury in a video.
In a letter read to the media by his French editor Timour Muhidine, the author dedicated this women’s award to “all Turkish and Kurdish women unjustly imprisoned.”
In the end, this essay prize was awarded to Annie Cohen-Solal, whose work “A Foreigner Named Picasso” (Fayard) tells how the Spanish master never obtained French citizenship.
Canceled from the finalists, the job was selected and selected in the fourth round with six votes. The historian interviewed by Agence France-Presse said she was very happy.
“It turns out that Picasso is 140 years old today! He is a man who never complains about what happened to him, even though he has experienced what all foreigners have experienced for decades: He goes to the police station to take fingerprints every two years. He never said a word,” recalled Annie Cohen-Solar.
When he applied for citizenship in 1940, “an obscure ticket office official, a powerful little man, a real Bettenister, buried his file. I found his name, and I can understand even A great genius is not immune from administration,” she added.
Agence France-Presse