The jury, presided over by actress Brigitte Fossey and including Éric Bouhier (writer), Élodie Fondacci (culture journalist at Radio Classique), Philippe Grimbert (psychoanalyst and writer), Francesca Mantovani (photographer), Delphine Peras (journalist at L’Express) and Pascale Senk (author and haikist poet), voted for :
Olivier Mak-Bouchard for his first novel ” Le Dit du Mistral ” (Éditions Le Tripode, August 2020).
After a night of violent storms, a man sees Monsieur Sécaillat, the old farmer next door, knocking on the door of his country house. What could have prompted this secretive, gruff neighbor, usually so stingy with words, to come to him? The man provides the answer by leading him to their adjoining field: a whole section of an ancient dry-stone wall has collapsed, swept away by the violent rain and waterlogged earth. Now, amidst the rubble and clay, mysterious shards of pottery are emerging in places. Intrigued by their discovery, the two men decide to carry out a clandestine excavation, unaware that this decision will turn their lives upside down.
If it draws on the works of Giono and Bosco, Le Dit du Mistral is not a book like the others. It’s the start of a journey, a novel about friendship, about transmission, about what we’ve inherited from past generations and what we want to pass on to future ones. It’s a story about refusing to forget, an invitation to life where stories, legends and dreams intertwine. It’s a window on the land of Provence, a photograph of a universe, a telescope magnetized by the gods.
Olivier Mak-Bouchard, 38, grew up in the Luberon and now lives in San Francisco.
Awarded €5,000, the Prix du Livre Cogedim Club honors French-language novels and stories in which family and transmission are at the heart of the plot.
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