The jurors of the Prix Femina, chaired this year by Évelyne Bloch-Dano, awarded The Jaguar's Dream. Magnificent double for Miguel Bonnefoy who, after receiving the Grand Prix du roman from the Académie française on October 26, won the Femina prize this Tuesday, November 5. A distinction which not only pays homage to a family epic but also highlights the abundant and sustained writing of the young 37-year-old Franco-Venezuelan author.
It was in the Orangerie room of the Carnavalet museum in Paris that the names of the winners of the Femina 2024 prize were announced. Starting with the prize in the French novel category. Miguel Bonnefoy won with five votes, compared to four going to Emma Becker with Pretty Evil (Albin Michel). The Femina Foreign Novel Prize is awarded to Chilean author Alia Trabucco Zerán for her novel Own (Robert Laffont), translated from Spanish by Anne Plantagenet. The Femina test prize goes to Paul Audi for Stand your ground (Stock).
What destiny recounted in The Jaguar's Dream ! From the child abandoned in front of the church in Maracaibo, Venezuela, to his grandson, the distinguished writer under the dome unfolds the saga of a family sometimes marked by bad luck, but never discouraged. The destiny of Antonio, the little orphan, is romantic as can be: cigarette seller, warehouse worker, young keeper of a brothel… Who would have detected in him a future renowned surgeon, a public man, esteemed and respected?
The thread of generations is peppered with bursts of wisdom, poetic sentences which bear witness to a shared heritage. “He resolved to take his risk”we learn from Antonio, who certainly instills in his family this appetite for life.
A jubilant language
Risking everything is also the path of his wife Ana Maria, the first female doctor in the region. The birth of their daughter Venezuela, then of the grandson Cristobal to the next generation, double of the author, maintains the memory of this beautiful destiny of a clan.
The strength of Miguel Bonnefoy, the Parisian, is to restore the upheavals of this harsh land of ancestors, to focus on the misfortune of the poor, and to revive the richness of traditions. With tunes from the Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez or the Chilean Luis Sepúlveda, he works in a warm, ample, jubilant French language.
From Venezuela to Chile
Latin American letters are therefore in the spotlight, with Venezuela by Miguel Bonnefoy, but also the Femina Foreign Novel Prize awarded to the Chilean author Alia Trabucco Zerán for her novel Own (Robert Laffont), translated from Spanish by Anne Plantagenet. At 40, Estela left her province to work in Santagio, Chile. The domestic worker takes care of the little daughter of a bourgeois couple for seven years. And she dies. Where can death enter, and who knows except Estela? So it is she who tells the story, a voice which pierces the book from side to side, with a powerful pen, hailed by Chilean critics, and now distinguished in France.
The Femina test prize goes to Paul Audi for Stand your ground (Stock), book resulting from the correspondence of two friends who, after the drama of October 7, questioned the resurgence of anti-Semitism and worried about the resulting increase in violence. A fictional construction to allow reflection as controlled as possible in the face of such a shipwreck.
Special jury prize
Finally, while his latest book, Long island, translated by Anna Gibson (Grasset), was part of the last selection for the foreign Femina award, the Irish writer Colm Tóibín is awarded a “special prize” from the jury for all of his work.
The winners of the three prizes respectively succeed Neige Sinno for sad tiger (POL), French novel category, the American Louise Erdrich for The Sentence (Albin Michel) for the foreign Femina, and Hugo Micheron for Anger and forgetting (Gallimard), essay category.
