Beaten at Goncourt and Renaudot, Gaspard Koenig consoles himself with the Jean Giono prize – Libération

2023-11-09 18:14:52

Unhappy finalist of the two prestigious literary prizes, the liberal philosopher received the Jean Giono prize this Thursday, November 9, for his novel “Humus”, the story of two agronomy students who “differ” in supplying earthworms to farmers.

A consolation prize. Unhappy finalist of the prestigious Goncourt and Renaudot prizes, Gaspard Koenig won the Jean Giono prize with his novel Humus, one of the most commented books of the 2023 literary season, the jury announced this Thursday, November 9. The 40-year-old philosopher, essayist and novelist is consecrated by a jury of eleven members, including two jurors from Goncourt (Paule Constant and Tahar Ben Jelloun) and one from Renaudot (Franz-Olivier Giesbert).

Created in 1990, and with Sylvie Giono on its jury, the daughter of the writer whose name it bears, the Jean Giono prize is endowed with 10,000 euros, and sponsored by the Jan Michalski Foundation for Writing and Literature.

Humus, published in August by Éditions de L’Observatoire, tells the story of the business of two agronomy students who are “forkers” in supplying earthworms to farmers. A work that “makes you want to buy a worm composter and plunge your hand into the earth to feel the worms coming to suck your skin,” according to Libé.

Transition to literature

Known as a philosopher and liberal essayist, Gaspard Koenig has brilliantly succeeded, by all accounts, in his transition to literature, with this fiction which raises many crucial questions for our common future, around a subject which initially seems eccentric.

This November Gaspard Koenig was in the running to receive the prestigious Goncourt and Renaudot prizes. But both rewards will ultimately elude him. The first went to Jean-Baptiste Andrea for his novel Veiller sur elle, while the second rewarded Ann Scott for Insolents.