The novelist Sandrine Collette won the Goncourt prize for prisoners on Tuesday with “Madelaine before dawn”, already crowned with the Goncourt prize for high school students at the end of November, the National Book Center announced on Tuesday.
This novel, published in August by JC Lattès, reached the final of the Prix Goncourt at the beginning of November, where it received one vote among the ten jurors.
Sandrine Collette, 54, first distinguished herself in dark novels, the success of which allowed her to nourish her passion for horses. Then she moved on to what the publishing world calls “white literature”, that which competes for the major literary prizes.
A doctor in political science who branched out into administrative professions at university, she now devotes herself to writing from her region of origin, Morvan.
“Madelaine Before Dawn”, which resembles a tale set in the Middle Ages, tells of the arrival in a village of a wild child.
Created in 2022, the Goncourt for prisoners is the result of the deliberations of 600 jurors in 45 penitentiary establishments throughout France, including overseas.
The process ended with a final deliberation of ten detainees, men and women, meeting behind closed doors at the National Book Center in Paris.
The president of the CNL, Régine Hatchondo, welcomed in a press release “the culmination of these four months of meetings, readings and debates”.
published on December 17 at 12:14 p.m., AFP
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