Traditionally, the jury for this Literary Prize deliberates on the last weekend of September, during the Book Fair which is held on Place Paul-Doumer. This year, for its 15th edition, the La Roquette Literary Prize was unveiled yesterday, Saturday December 14, 2024.
The distribution of books began in mid-September, the summer being complicated for the readers of the jury. “It's very good like that, it creates an event in winter“, welcomes Anne-Marie Sasse, of the reading committee.
A contested vote
After a morning deliberation and a secret ballot with the 31 participants at the Hôtel de Chartrouse, in the heart of the Roquette district, it was at the Neighborhood House that the prize was officially announced. The winner is therefore Lolita Sene, for her first novel A summer at Jida's published by Le Cherche midi, which tells the destiny of a young girl in a Kabyle family where the cult of the son reigns and a very particular way of keeping secrets. She won by one vote ahead of Arlesian Max de Paz, for her first novel The Channel.
“We will soon invite the winner to meet her audience. I think she will be very happy“, insists Marie Eugène, in charge of the reading committee. She welcomes the continuation for fifteen years of this “general public award during which people can talk freely about what they liked or didn't like“.
For her part, she had a preference for the novel by Max de Paz, “a young sociologist who worked on the homeless in Paris for this very committed first novel“. Marie-Jo Le Meur voted for Lolita Sene's novel. “I loved this book which tackles a very complicated subject which is incest and rape. We have the impression of accompanying her and discovering family secrets with her.“And the member of the reading committee added:”There is also a clash of cultures with the French heroine and her Kabyle grandmother with the place of women and the traditions which confront her desire for emancipation.“
Points of view diverged and jovially confronted each other when the morning ended in conviviality at the Maison de district de la Roquette with an aperitif. The Neighborhood Committee took over the La Roquette Literary Prize in 2019. As a reminder, it was Fred Tartavel, owner of “Mangelire”, who created it in 2010.
