Can the 2024 Goncourt Prize go to Hélène Gaudy? Discover the “outsider” of this competition

LITERATURE – Who to succeed Marguerite Duras, forty years after the decisive coronation of her novel The Lover ? This Monday, November 4, four authors are still in the running to win the most prestigious French literary award, the Goncourt Prize. And among them, one outsider »: the writer Hélène Gaudy.

« I learned it in class, imagine », confided the teacher in master’s degree in literary creation at the University of Paris VIII to franceinfo at the end of October. It was one of his students – hidden on her phone – who told him that she was on the shortlist, opposite Gaël Faye, Kamel Daoud and Sandrine Collette. “ And so everyone looked at me strangely », remembers the novelist.

This Monday is for his latest novel Archipelagospublished by Editions de l’Olivier during the literary season, which she is competing for. A very personal book in which Hélène Gaudy explores the story of a man, her father. A great collector who amassed a whole bunch of objects during his life, he has always remained discreet about himself or his childhood, of which he says he has no memories.

Straddling the family and collective story (including that of the Resistance), Hélène Gaudy not only attempts to unravel the secrets of this mysterious individual in this book that she imagined as a dialogue with him, she also delivers a gentle text -bitter, pictorial and beautifully written about transmission or memory.

Archipelagos at Goncourt

And that says a lot about her, too. A first. “ I have always rather worked on subjects very far from me, on distant places, on historical questions », Specifies the 49-year-old author, still at franceinfo. In A world without shoreit took us off the coast of the Svalbard archipelago, in the 1930s. Midwinterwe are on the road to Lisbon, in the north of the United States. And in An island, a fortress : an antechamber of Auschwitz.

The appointment ofArchipelagoshis eighth novel, is no coincidence. Even if the Goncourt jurors seem more fond of romantic works, intimate texts also have a significant place among their favorites, as recalled by the prize awarded to Brigitte Giraud for Live fastin 2022. The surprise comes more from its author.

Even if Hélène Gaudy certainly comes from a privileged Parisian background (her father Jean-Charles Gaudy himself being an author and art school professor) in addition to having already been in the running for the said literary award, she has a less conventional profile and approach to writing than many of his predecessors.

A children’s author

Starting with its field of practice, not confined to stories for adults. She is the author of several children’s novels. When I was Cagibi talks about learning to find your place within your family. I want to take away the nightdifficult to fall asleep in childhood. It works. His series Lubin and Louabout werewolf twins published by Gallimard, now has nine volumes.

A visual artist by training, the former graduate of Olivier de Serres has kept one foot in art. She is the author, for example, of a book on Matisse. And another on Picasso. To her too, we owe the preface to a book of photographs by Ayline Olukman (America) and the texts which accompany those of Pierre Faure, in The lying days.

This diversity in writing is dear to him. “ I like this idea that when you write, you can find different periods of your life. When I write children’s literature, for example, I have the impression of rediscovering the pleasure of reading from when I was a child. », argues the former student of arts deco from Strasbourg.

Sea viewsdiploma and first novel

School for which she also presented an atypical diploma project: her first novel Sea viewsin 2005. A year later, it was published by Impressions nouvelles editions, before appearing in the second selection for the Médicis prize (won that year by Sorj Chalandon for A promise).

At the origin of a sound journey at the Maison Rabelais in Touraine, or one of the literary escapes of the Paris Opera, Hélène Gaudy nourishes her relationship with the public, as in a stroll at the Musée d’Orsay, during musical readings at the Albert Kahn museum or to the rhythm of its residencies and writing workshops.

No surprise to see her cite André Breton, leader of the surrealist movement, in her latest book. Hélène Gaudy herself cultivates a distinct vision of literature, which she describes as a “ living experience », to use his words in this interview for Collateral. His contributions to the journal Half the stuff can attest to this. In 2018, she posted photos of her grandfather there. For the Gaudys, the cabinet of curiosities is a family affair.

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