The Combourg-Chateaubriand literary prize was awarded this year to the writer Sylvain Tesson, for his travel story With the fairies (Éditions Equateur), published in January. The public is invited to the conference-debate that the author will give at La Parenthese, Saturday October 12, from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.
With the fairies is like a stylized logbook of the sailing trip that the adventurous author took with two friends. From Galicia to Scotland, via Brittany, Wales, the Isle of Man and Ireland, Sylvain Tesson regularly visited the coasts of the Atlantic during these three months at sea. His work is also the story of an inner journey nourished by reflections through encounters and landscapes.
Why “With the Fairies”?
No, Sylvain Tesson did not return to childhood, giving credit to the existence of fairies. The writer being inaccessible via modern means of communication (neither telephone nor internet), it is in the lines of “ With the fairies » that we discover what they represent for him. “ What remains in what is not yet is magical. Day into night. Excitement in sleep. The dream in reality. »
If the writer is “ gone to look for the fairies on the edge of the world, it was to beg for help from the beauty diffused in the Celtic sky. » Get away from the din of men and machines so that the magic can take place because “ the wonderful eman [e] of reality. […] What is enough is wonderful. Becomes supernatural which was not enough. »
Unanimously nominated
« The jury of the Académie Chateaubriand unanimously chose Sylvain Tesson as the winner of the Combourg 2024 prize.specifies Hervé Louboutin, its founder. The criterion that has guided our selections for twenty-five years is style. For what ? Because Chateaubriand is above all a style, without equivalent for a century and a half. In the total freedom to reward who we prefer, we promote authors who are not lukewarm faucets. »
Hervé Louboutin further underlines the similarities between the two authors, although separated by more than two centuries. “ Like Chateaubriand, Tesson is a great traveler, like him, he loves “this shredding” of the coasts of the ancient Atlantic. Chateaubriand believed in sylphs, Tesson believes in fairies. Our only chapel is Chateaubriand. »
