The 2024 Interallié prize for Thibault de Montaigu

It is for “Heart”, in which the author returns to his ancestor Louis, captain of the hussars cut down in 1914 in a cavalry charge.

The Interallié prize, the last of the major autumn awards, was awarded this Wednesday, November 13 to Thibault de Montaigu for “Heart” (Albin Michel). This autobiographical novel, an exploration of his ancestry, was elected in the first round with five votes. He had a good run this season, appearing in the first selections for the Goncourt, Renaudot and Jean Giono prizes. Thibault de Montaigu succeeds Gaspard Koenig, who received the Interallié prize in 2023 for “Humus” (L’Observatoire)

“I will tell you a little anecdote, it is that in my grandfather's house, in the countryside, there were all the Folios, the first Folios from the 1970s (…) And there are many authors who had the Interallié”, commented Thibault de Montaigu to AFP, citing Michel Déon, Félicien Marceau, Antoine Blondin, René Fallet or Roger Vaillant.

In its last square, the 100% male jury of this literary prize created in 1930, which preferably crowns writer-journalists, selected only one woman: Delphine Minoui for “Badjens” (Seuil). The other two candidates were the popular thriller author Olivier Norek, with his “Winter Warriors” (Michel Lafon), who looks back on the “Winter War” which pitted Finland against the USSR at the start of the Second World War and Abel Quentin, who focuses on the authors of the famous Meadows report of 1972, on the limits to growth, in “Cabin” (The Observatory).

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Born in 1978 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Thibault de Montaigu began his career at “Libération” and collaborated with numerous publications (“Le Point”, “Paris Match”, “L’Officiel”, “Jalouse”, “L’ Optimum”…). Since January 2018, he has been the editor-in-chief of the magazine “L’Officiel Voyage”. He published his first novel, “LesAnges Burn”, published by Fayard in 2003, selected for the Flore Prize. Seven years later, his third opus, “Les Grands gestes la nuit” (Fayard), was a finalist for the Interallié prize. Author of an essay on masturbation (“Journey around my sex”, Grasset, 2015), the writer later recounted in “La Grace” (2020) how he was touched by faith in a monastery where he had surrendered, initially to follow in the footsteps of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès. This story won him the Flore prize that year.

In “Heart”, he recounts the way his ill father urged him to write about his ancestor Louis, a hussar captain who was cut down in 1914 in a cavalry charge. “Louis is not, however, the main character of this poignant twilight novel, where it is established, by virtue of psychogenealogy, that the traumas of the ancestors condition the torments of their descendants”wrote Jérôme Garcin last September. “At the heart of “Heart”, there is Emmanuel, Thibault’s father, who is dying, at 85, without giving up his splendor. Ruined gambler, arthritic seducer, anemic huckster, former globetrotter becalmed in the small studio of a home rented by his sons then at the Sainte-Périne hospital, where he is nicknamed “the Sun King” because he moans in the language of Saint-Simon, the old count loses his sight, but clings to life, which he fantasizes and which his son prolongs, crying. »

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Please note: The latest news is that the jury is made up of Jean-Marie Rouart, Stéphane Denis, Gilles Martin-Chauffier, Eric Neuhoff, Christophe Ono-dit-Biot, Jean-Christophe Rufin, Jean-René Van der Plaetsen and Florian Zeller.