Prix des Deux Magots 2022
Louis-Henri de la Rochefoucauld was present at the Café des Deux Magots to receive his prize. There was the jubilation of the holidays. A prize awarded by 7 votes to 4 to Jérôme Chantreau (Bélhazar, éditions Phébus). Contrasting with the ambient gloom, the epic crossing of Paris and History, the cheerfulness, humor and irony seduced most of the jurors present at the Deux Magots today. The jury wanted to celebrate a certain verve that is very much in keeping with the spirit of Les Deux Magots, as the president of the Prize, Étienne de Montéty, pointed out. As for the winner, he says he is particularly proud to follow in the footsteps of “such a great record of achievement”.
Louis-Henri de La Rochefoucauld, Châteaux de sable, Editions Robert Laffont
256 pages, format : 135 x 215 mm, 19,00€.
“It took me a long time to become interested in the Revolution, and even longer to understand it. Then, I came back to it, and the period seemed to me captivating. In spite of the atrocity of the facts, everything was beautiful: the places, the clothes, the names of the good guys, the bullies and the hoodlums. My out-of-stepness found an echo in the figure of Louis XVI. I had a taste for lost causes and the greatest of the guillotined was indefensible. When would he finally get a good lawyer?
By turns melancholy and droll, this novel features an heir to the nobility of the sword who no longer knows which saint to follow.
Young father, a little lost, precarious in the press, the narrator lives in a world in the process of extinction. Nothing serious: coming from a family decimated during the Revolution, he learned detachment. Too out of touch to have political convictions, he was not a royalist, but did not believe in the myth of a new France born in 1789… until the day Louis XVI appeared to him! What if he had fun rehabilitating this great unloved dandy, moving in spite of himself?
More information about this novel
Louis-Henri de La Rochefoucauld is a literary critic and novelist. He is notably the author of La Révolution française and Le Club des vieux garçons.
The Prix des Deux Magots
The jury of the Prix des Deux Magots, chaired by Étienne de Montéty, brings together writers, personalities and journalists. The adventure began in 1933 at the terrace of the Deux Magots when a circle of writers (including Roger Vitrac) learned that the Prix Goncourt was awarded to André Malraux for La condition humaine. Offended, they expressed their dissatisfaction and decided on the spot to create the literary prize of the Deux Magots to break away from conformism, encourage creation and arouse a new artistic spirit. A jury of 13 authors is constituted who each give 100 francs as an endowment. The first winner was Raymond Queneau, leader of surrealism, for his novel, Le chiendent.
Since then, the prize has been awarded to promising authors every last Tuesday in January. The winning book must have been published in the year preceding the day of the award.
The Prix des Deux Magots is one of the oldest literary awards in France. It also has a budget of 7,700 euros to encourage and support the winners in their writing.
The Jury of the Prix des Deux Magots
The jury of the Prix des Deux Magots, chaired by Étienne de Montety, includes :
- Laurence Caracalla, journalist and writer
- Isabelle Carré, actress and writer
- Jean Chalon, journalist and writer
- Jean-Luc Coatalem, writer and journalist for Géo
- Eric Deschodt, journalist and writer
- Louis Doucet, laureate of the Académie Française
- Pauline Dreyfus, writer
- Benoît Duteurtre, producer and writer
- Pierre Kyria, literary critic
- Marianne Payot, journalist at L’Express
- Anne Pons, writer
The Prix des Deux Magots – Selection 2022
Four books were selected for this prize:
- Jérôme Chantreau, Belhazar, Editions Phebus
- Louis-Henri de la Rouchefoucauld, Castles of sand, Robert Laffont editions
- Simonetta Greggio, Bellissima, published by Stock
- Marie Vingtras, Blizzard, éditions de l’Olivier
The closing dinner of the Prix des Deux Magots 2022
Publishers and authors of the French publishing industry were gathered at Les Deux Magots for the grand closing dinner of the Prize.
Last night at the Café littéraire, as in the salons of the same name, the ballet of spontaneous synchronized glances and conversations between the worthy representatives of French publishing and authors were going well. The guests enjoyed, for the occasion, refined dishes in several suites where the lobster salad preceded the white turbot and the veal chop. At
In the same place where Sartre, de Beauvoir, Hemingway and so many others once remade the world, the charm of this German-Pratin atmosphere was still intact around this gala dinner that Boris Vian would certainly not have denied!
