Chaired by Jérôme Garcinthe 21st Deauville Books & Music Prize, awarded on the occasion of the festival of the same name, crowned, Saturday May 4, the author and violinist Léonor de Récondo for his ninth novel The big fire, published by Grasset. The winner also received an endowment of 4,500 euros.
Initiatory and feminist story which takes place in the 17th centurye century in Venice, The big fire follows the destiny of Ilaria Tagianotte. Coming from a family of fabric merchants, the young girl was placed at Pieta, a renowned public institution where she learned the violin and became the famous maestro’s copyist. Antonio Vivaldi. She also becomes friends with a little girl her age, Prudenza. At the dawn of her fifteenth birthday, the protagonist discovers music and carnal desire at the same time. To the point of confusing them and getting lost.
Artist at heart
Born in 1976, Léonor de Récondo studied the violin from the age of five, but only took up the pen in 2010 with her first novel, The Grace of the White Cypress (The weather). She stood out three years later with Forgotten dreams (Sabine Wespieser) who receives the literary prize from high school students and apprentices of Burgundy. Loves (Sabine Wespieser, 2008) received the booksellers’ prize and the RTL-Lire grand prize, while Cardinal point (Sabine Wespieser, 2017) is crowned with the France Culture-Télérama student novel prize. In 2021, the author changed publishing house – after a brief stint at Stock in 2020 – to join Grasset.
On April 19, the City of Deauville also awarded the 16th Deauville Teenagers Prize, worth 3,000 euros, to the album Music Queens of Rebecca Manzoni, Émilie Valentin And Leslie Plee. Adapted from the animated series broadcast on Arte, the work was published by Arte éditions, in collaboration with Bayard Graphic. The title was chosen by a selection committee, supported by the contribution of more than 5,700 students, from 98 establishments in five Normandy departments.
