Giraud recognized for China’s Choix Goncourt honors

French ambassador to China Bertrand Lortholary announces Brigitte Giraud as the winner of the Choix Goncourt China 2022 in Beijing on March 28, 2023. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

On Tuesday, French author Brigitte Giraud was awarded the Choix Goncourt China 2022, China’s choice of the 2022 Goncourt Prize, for her novel Vive Vite (Living Fast) in Beijing.

French ambassador to China Bertrand Lortholary, who took office on March 13, held a press conference for the announcement.

Created in 1903, Le Prix Goncourt is France’s highest literary honor recognizing “the best and most imaginative prose of the year”. The prize is often mentioned with the Pulitzer Prize in the United States or the Booker Prize in the United Kingdom.

The laureate is chosen by 10 members of the Goncourt Academy. Marcel Proust, Simone de Beauvoir and Marguerite Duras were among past winners. The prize comes with a symbolic award of 10 euros (74.7 yuan), but the win usually results in sharp spikes in sales.

The Choix Goncourt China was set up in 2018 by the French embassy in China, making China the first country in Asia and the 12th in the world where the French literary prize is selected.

For the competition’s third edition, more than 100 second-year graduate students and PhD students from the French departments of 10 Chinese universities were invited to form the jury of the Choix Goncourt China 2022. They spent months reading the eight shortlisted works for the year’s prize before deliberating on their favorite title through a two-round vote.

Four shortlisted works for the Choix Goncourt China 2022 at the French embassy in Beijing on March 28, 2023. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Three other French works — Les Liens artificiels (Artificial Links) by Nathan Devers, Une Somme humaine (A Human Burden) by Makenzy Orcel and La Petite Menteuse (The Little Liar) by Pascale Robert-Diard — won the hearts of jury members and made the shortlist.

Lortholary said in his speech he sees the Choix Goncourt China, an offshoot of France’s 120-year-old literature prize, as a significant event to showcase “contemporary French culture, spread French literature as well as promote the education of French in China.”

Du Qinggang, a professor of French studies at Wuhan University and advisor to the Choix Goncourt China, and two representatives of the student jury participated in the conference and shared their thoughts on Giraud’s work.

Vivre Vite also won Giraud, born in 1960, the 2022 Goncourt Prize last November. Published by Flammarion, the novel recounts a chain of events that led to the motorcycle accident that killed her partner in 1999. With a series of “What ifs”, the novelist reflects on the role chance plays in life.

On Wednesday, the Goncourt Prize laureate joined two jury representatives of the Choix Goncourt China 2022 for a livestreamed discussion held by the French Cultural Center.

According to the French embassy, the Chinese version of Giraud’s winning work will be published by Xiron, a Beijing-based publisher.

Guests pose for a group photo at the press conference of the Choix Goncourt China 2022 at the French embassy in Beijing on March 28, 2023. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]