Every year for 27 years, the Wepler-Fondation La Poste Prize rewards an unclassifiable contemporary literary work, and salutes the audacity and singularity of a second title by awarding a special mention. The establishment of a rotating jury ensures that this Prize has independence, freshness and sincerity of judgment which results in an often unexpected result.
Square, gardens and town planning
Thomas Clerc wins the 2024 Wepler-Fondation La Poste Prize for Paris, museum of the 21st century. The eighteenth arrondissement published by Editions de Minuit.
Born in 1965 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, is a French novelist, essayist, poet and academic. He is an associate professor of modern literature, a doctor of letters and a lecturer in contemporary literature at the University of Paris-Nanterre 2. Thomas Clerc develops introspective writing. He became known in 2005 by publishing a biography of Maurice Sachs, entitled Maurice Sachs le disœuvré, in which he explored the myth of this former companion and assistant of Cocteau. He is also the author of Personal writings, essay on the difficulty of defining autobiography.
The 18th arrondissement has 425 streets, squares, squares, avenues, towns, gardens, villas, boulevards, dead ends and passages that Thomas Clerc has undertaken to survey since he recently moved there. Total description, born from his wanderings, drifts and notations, this book omits nothing of what the city lets you see, hear and feel.
From Montmartre to the outskirts of the ring road, from the inhabitants of its neighborhoods to lost tourists, from cafes to dark stores, from night to day, the old suburb of Paris, revolted under the Commune, continues to change its appearance, when It is not the author himself who refashions it according to his journey. The 18th arrondissement unfolds like a giant canvas where each street is a living painting.
Célestin de Meeûs: born in Brussels in 1991, notably published Cadastres (Prix de la Vocation) with Éditions Cheyne, as well as Cavale russe (special mention of the Apollinaire Prize and the Triennal Poetry Prize of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation). Since 2018, he has run the editions of l’Angle Mort, of which he is co-founder. Mythology of the .12 is his first novel.
It’s the story of a summer solstice day in the middle of nowhere. It’s the story of two young guys who hang out in the parking lot of a supermarket in an old Clio, sleeping around and drinking beers and joints. It is the story of a doctor, whose orderly life and model family, built in an obsession with success, are shattered, a tipsy man who powerlessly dwells on his failures and gradually locks himself into a paranoid and delusional monologue.
It’s the story of an evening that never ends, of a snack on the side of the road, of a trip into nature and of a small cabin by the water, of Max and of Théo, of Rombouts and the owner of Chez Mustache, of a doctor adrift, of stragglers, of hatred and boredom, of what we only regret because it escapes us, of the need to possession and the bitter realization that nothing control, drunkenness and violence.
The La Poste Foundation endows this prize with a sum of 10,000 euros which rewards romantic risk-taking and a demanding style. It also endows another author with a sum of 3,000 euros through a special mention from the jury awarded to a prodigiously unclassifiable literary UFO.
For twenty-seven years, the most ardent wish of the Wepler-Fondation La Poste Prize has been to support twelve writers selected in editorial diversity so that they exist on the autumn literary scene. Our rotating jury, made up of an inmate, booksellers, an employee of the La Poste group, two literary critics and readers, crowns two in particular and provides them with substantial resources which encourage the continuation of their adventure literary.
By Dispatch
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