The Medici Prize awarded to Julia Deck

(Paris) The literary season continues in France: the Médicis prize was awarded on Wednesday to Julia Deck for an autobiographical novel dedicated to her mother, Ann of Englandpublished by Seuil.

“I am very moved to have this prize,” declared the winner at the La Méditerranée restaurant in Paris.

She won with five votes to Thomas Clerc’s four, in the third round.

Julia Deck, 50, retraces the destiny of her mother, born in Manchester in a working-class environment where books had no place. This woman will emancipate herself, emigrate to France and become passionate about literature and the arts.

“The danger with autobiographical material is obviously being fascinated by its subject and no longer making sense of things for the reader,” noted Julia Deck, interviewed by AFP.

“Fascinated by my mother’s romantic trajectory for a very, very long time. Because she is a person born in a very modest environment, before the Second World War, where no one had studied, and who moved around a lot, both socially and intellectually, artistically,” he said. -she emphasized.

The Medici Prize for the foreign novel went to the Guatemalan Eduardo Halfon, for Tarantula (Quai Voltaire editions). He received four votes against two for the Austrian Josef Winkler in the eighth round.

“I am happy, shocked to arrive at this very official ceremony,” commented the winner.

The Medici essay prize was awarded to the German Reiner Stach for the third volume of his biography of Franz Kafka, The years of youth. It took only one round, where he received six votes.