Benjamin Stock, lucky winner of the Flore prize

The Flore Prize was awarded yesterday Thursday to Benjamin Stock for his first novel, Marca crazy critique of conspiracy theory based on the novels of Marc Levy, announced the jury.

The winner won with 11 votes to one for Joy Majdalani, during the deliberations at the Café de Flore, a brasserie in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district. Majdalani, a young Franco-Lebanese writer, was among the finalists for the prize for Jessica, alone in a room (Grasset), with Nagui Zinet and his Exemplary trajectory (Joëlle Losfeld), Daphné Tamage with The return of Saturn (Stock) and finally Pierre Deram, for Nights (Grasset).

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The Flore Prize was created in 1994 by the writer Frédéric Beigbeder and a café manager, Carole Chrétiennot, who have both remained members of the jury since. It distinguishes “promising young authors, with insolent and original talent”.

Endowed with 6,150 euros, it has the originality of offering its winner a glass of Pouilly-fumé every day for a year at the famous Parisian café-restaurant, on a glass engraved with his name. Marc, published by Rue Fromentin, is the work of a 36-year-old author who “worked in communication for companies in the ecological transition sector”, according to his publisher’s presentation.

The hero is a start-up manager, David, who thanks to a colleague will discover the existence of a clandestine community of Marc Levy readers. Little by little, David will become convinced that this popular novelist hides communist messages in his plots and the names of his characters.