2023-11-05 15:58:16
Awarded by an exclusively female jury, the Femina Prize will reveal its winners on November 6, 2023. Created in 1904 by around twenty female contributors to the magazine Happy life, this prize rewards three writers each fall, for a French novel, a foreign novel and an essay.
► 2022 : A dog at my table, by Claudie Hunzinger (Editions Grasset)
Visual artist and novelist Claudie Hunzinger, already awarded the December 2019 prize for Great Deer, wins the Femina Prize in 2022 for A dog at my table. This novel, which was also in the running for the Renaudot and Medici prizes, takes the reader to a lost corner of the Vosges forest, to the heart of the intimacy of an elderly couple eager for literature. The visit of a young dog, who shows several signs of abuse, shakes up their peaceful daily life.
In the foreign novel and essay category, the Femina prizes were respectively awarded to the Englishwoman Rachel Cusk, for The addiction (Gallimard), and to the historian Annette Wieviorka, specialist in the Shoah, for Tombs. Autobiography of my family (Editions du Seuil).
► 2021 : S’adapterby Clara Dupont-Monod (Éditions Stock)
In S’adapter, The journalist and writer Clara Dupont-Monod recounts the shocking irruption of a disabled child into the daily life of a Cévennes family. The text poetically narrates the difficult adaptation to disability, the range of reactions aroused within siblings by the arrival of this mute child, as if disconnected from the world. The book also won the Goncourt prize for high school students and the Landerneau prize for readers in 2021.
In 2021, the foreign novel prize goes to Turk Ahmet Altan with Madame Hayat (Actes Sud), written from the Istanbul jails, and that of the essay to the writer Annie Cohen-Solal, for A stranger named Picasso (Fayard).
► 2020 : Human natureby Serge Joncour (Éditions Flammarion)
The writer Serge Joncour wins the 2020 Femina Prize for French novels with Human nature. This twelfth novel explores thirty years of French history, through the eyes of a peasant who lives reclusively on the farm of his childhood.
The British Deborah Levy won the foreign novel prize in 2020 with her autobiographical diptych The cost of living et What I don’t want to know (Éditions du sous-sol), while the essay prize was awarded to the historian Christophe Granger for Joseph Kabris or the possibilities of a life (Editions Flammarion).
► 2019 : By the roads, by Sylvain Prudhomme (L’Arbalète/Gallimard collection)
In his fifth novel, By the roads, the author of Grands and of Legendtells the story of Sacha, a single writer in his forties who leaves Paris to settle in a town in the south-east of France, leaving behind his wife and child. There he finds a long-time friend, also married, a father and often absent from home. Gradually, Sacha forges closer and closer ties with this family.
In 2019, the Spanish poet and writer Manuel Vilas won the foreign novel category of the Femina Prize with Ordesa (Éditions du sous-sol), and the writer Emmanuelle Lambert won the essay prize for Giono, furious (Stock Editions).
► 2018 : The Lambeauby Philippe Lançon (Éditions Gallimard)
Survivor of the attack on Charlie Hebdo on January 7, 2015, journalist and novelist Philippe Lançon delivers a powerful testimony of his reconstruction, both mental and physical, in The Lambeau. The author first recounts the hours preceding the assault before recounting over the course of around sixty pages the drama of the day itself, during which his jaw was torn off by the terrorists’ shots. In this autobiographical book, also awarded the Renaudot special prize, Philippe Lançon explores the ambiguous relationship he has with the nursing staff, responsible for creating a new face for him.
The foreign Femina prize went that year to the American Alice McDermott for The Ninth Hour (Editions de la Table Ronde), and that of the essay was attributed to Élisabeth de Fontenay for Gaspard of the night (Stock Editions).
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