The Castel 2024 prize for Grégoire Bouillier

« Receiving the Castel Prize is great, reacted the author. It’s a reward that goes straight to my heart. Tonight, the night is a novel. What more could you ask for? »

The novel, which has sold nearly 14,000 copies according to Gfk, takes the reader into a new investigation of Bmore, the hero of Heart does not give inhis previous novel (Flammarion, 2022). Immersing himself in the life and work of Monet, Bmore soon sees his intuition confirmed: beneath the peaceful surface of the pond lies a veritable mass grave. The year in which Monet began to paint the large panels constitutes a first clue: 1914, the beginnings of the great butchery which would bury nine million lives. “What Monet painted between 1914 and 1918 is the time of war and it is war made time. »

A multi-award winning author

It is also the mourning of his first son, Jean, who died in February 1914. A mourning which had taken him away from the brushes, which he took back in hand at the start of hostilities, no longer simple tools of the artist but weapons of war. “The day France entered the war against Germany, I suddenly imagine Monet writing in his diary: “Today, water lilies.” »muses the author, in reference to Journal by Kafka, in which the latter noted on August 2, 1914: “Germany has declared war on Russia. Afternoon swimming pool. »