The Castel Prize was awarded to Grégoire Bouillier for his novel “Le Syndrome de l’Orangerie”, dedicated to Monet’s obsession with water lilies

Grégoire Bouillier is the third winner of this prize, created in 2022 and endowed with 5,000 euros.

The Castel Prize, literary prize for the restaurant of the same name in Paris, was awarded on Wednesday November 13, 2024 to Grégoire Bouillier for Orangerie Syndromenovel dedicated to the painter Claude Monet.

The author of the novels File M, price December 2017, et The heart does not give inthis time signs a shorter work where he raises many questions about Monet’s obsession with water lilies.

“He is rewarded for the modernity of his art, the alliance of night and light, and the playful grace of his style”commented in a press release the jury, composed of Emma Becker, Claire Berest, Vincent Darré, Étienne Gernelle, Eva Ionesco, Marc Lambron, Justine Lévy, Jean-Noël Pancrazi, Abnousse Shalmani and Gaël Tchakaloff.

Why did Monet paint the flowers of his garden to the point of obsession (four hundred times over thirty years)? This question leads Grégoire Bouillier, once again for the occasion the detective Bmore, to embark on an investigation which takes us from the Orangerie to Giverny via Japan and even Auschwitz-Birkenau, to try to elucidate the mysteries of this “Orangerie syndrome”.

Grégoire Bouillier’s book was in competition with the novels of Christophe Bigot, Another one is waiting for me elsewhere (La Martinière), by Thibault de Montaigu, Heart (Albin Michel), by Yasmina Reza, Accounts of certain events (Flammarion), and Félicia Viti, The Vertical Girl (Gallimard).

In 2023, Arthur Dreyfus won the prize with his novel The Third Hand (P.O.L).