The news has broken. Nathan Hill is the winner of the Grand Prize for American Literature, an institution which recognizes each year an American novel translated into French for its exceptional literary qualities. With Well-beinga literary and sentimental fresco, the writer embroiders a precise story around a couple who are fading and becoming gentrified. After The ghosts of the old countrya book that had already made waves in 2017, Nathan Hill imposes its place in the French literary field.
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Nathan Hill, grand gagnant
Nathan Hill wins the precious sesame among a host of authors like Kaveh Akbar with Martyr !, Richard Ford with Fool’s paradise et Alice McDermott with his book Absolution. The jury was made up of ten members including three journalists: Oriane Jeancourt Galignani (Defector), Philippe Chevilley (The Echoes) and Nicolas Carreau (Europe 1); of four booksellers: Sylvie Loriquer (The Catcher in the Rye)Géraldine Mausservey (Paris Bookstore), Jean-Christophe Millois (Bookstore School) and Pascal Thuot (Millepages); and three publishers: Caroline Ast (Belfond), Francis Geffard (Albin Michel) and Juliette Ponce (Dalva). The writer will receive his prize in the coming weeks.
With Well-beingtranslated by Nathalie Bru, Nathan Hill becomes the worthy representative of American literary painting which denounces with humor the excesses and the excesses of a system at the end of its rope. Through 700 pages (thus forming a literary juggernaut), the author develops the relationships of two soul mates, Elisabeth and Jack, with great finesse. A romantic bond that fades over trials and the passage of time. The jury described the novel by Nathan Hill in these terms in the press release: “Around the couple formed by Elisabeth and Jack, Nathan Hill creates an impressive social and sentimental fresco, from the 1990s to the present day. Carried by a narrative virtuosity, Well-being focuses as much on the complexity of relationships between people as on the metamorphoses of the city of Chicago to those of contemporary society.” Without falling into pathos, nor into the tradition of the novel made in USA, Hill draws the features of a complex affection where the face of the other takes on other forms, other lights. An explorer of generations, he seeks to understand the traumas of these personified creations while painting the portrait of a plural (and sometimes terrifying) America.
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