“It’s a prize I’ve been waiting for for ten years”declared the winner, at the Carnavalet-Histoire museum in Paris, recalling that his mother tongue was not French but Spanish.
“The Dream of the Jaguar” published by Rivages, which the author wrote in Toulon where he settled two years ago, is in line with the family sagas between South America and France of this 37-year-old author.
He won with five votes, compared to four for Emma Becker with “Le Mal Jolie”.
Another South American was rewarded, with the Femina prize for foreign novel, the Chilean of Palestinian origin Alia Trabucco Zeran, for “Propre” (published by Robert Laffont).
“An honor”
“It is an honor that Proper is the first Latin American novel to win the Foreign Femina Prize”she said.
The Femina essay prize was awarded to Paul Audi for “Standing Head” (Stock), an essay on anti-Semitism in France whose writing has been disrupted by events in the Middle East since October 7, 2023.
“I feel in some way inclined to defend the fight against anti-Semitism from a point of view which is not, precisely, that of a Jew, because I am not one”declared this Franco-Lebanese philosopher.
A special prize was also awarded to Irishman Colm Toibin, for “Long Island” (Grasset). Present at the award ceremony, he thanked the translator of his 15 books, Anna Gibson.
