Beat the odds
Launched in 1969, the Booker Prize rewards the author of the “best novel written in English” each year. Compared to the French Goncourt, it has contributed to the success of writers like Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and even the 2024 Nobel Han Kang, who won it in 2016 with The vegetarian. The prize is a reward of 50,000 books (around 56,000 francs) and the promise of international fame synonymous with success in bookstores. Samantha Harvey defied the odds which favored Americans Rachel Kushner and Percival Everett. The latter, a multi-award winner, was the big favorite in this competition with “James”.
A bit like Kamel Daoud, 2024 Goncourt Prize winner who published in 2013 with “Meursault, contre-investigation” a counterpoint to Albert Camus’ classic, The StrangerJames Everett revisits one of the masterpieces of American literature: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain. This time, the narration is from the point of view of Jim, a slave.
One of the main plot threads is linguistic. In Twain, Jim’s dialect makes him a limited, somewhat pathetic character. In Everett, it is thought of as a survival tool that slaves use to hide their real abilities from white slavers. Like her compatriot Rachel Kushner with Creation Lake (Medici Prize 2018 with The Mars Club), he escaped the famous prize for the second time.
Overcoming the wound of the Great War
The Canadian Anne Michaels, dubbed by her compatriot Margaret Atwood, also leaves empty-handed despite very good reviews from the press with Held. In this new novel, the novelist explores the themes of her previous stories: history, memory, the effects of trauma and mourning over long periods, through the story of a man who tries to overcome the wound of the Great War.
Disappointment also for the Australian Charlotte Wood who failed to win with Stone Yard Devotional. In this seventh book, the author tells the story of an anonymous woman who, after leaving her job as a conservationist and her husband, retreats to an isolated community of nuns near the town where she grew up. She was the first Australian to reach the final of the award in ten years.
Finally, the youngest in the competition, the Dutchwoman Yael van der Wouden, did not manage to create a surprise with her historic fresco The Safekeephis highly acclaimed first novel.
