Created in 2018, the Jacques Lacarrière Literary Prize is awarded every two years to a French-language text of the highest literary standard, extending the writer's spirit.
Jacques Lacarrière
"If we want to try to find something of the Gauls, by which I mean something that the landscape still bears, even after so many centuries, it is to Bibracte that we must go, to this Mount Beuvray dominating the Morvan plateaux. Jacques Lacarrière, Chemin Faisant, 1974
Jacques Lacarrière (1925-2005) was a poet, writer and essayist.
As a Hellenist, he translated ancient authors (Sophocles), but also modern Greek writers (Vassilis Vassilikos, Costas Taktsis, George Seferis, Odysséas Elytis, Yannis Ritsos...), thus contributing to making them known in France. He has written extensively on ancient and modern Greece, but has also taken an interest in Turkey, Syria, Egypt, India, as well as France, where he has lived.
A travel writer, he is also considered one of the pioneers of the revival of poetic and initiatory hiking. His work is very diverse, complex, erudite and always alive.
Jacques Lacarrière was very attached to Burgundy, where he lived, and especially to Mount Beuvray, site of the ancient city of Bibracte.
the jacques lacarrière prize
Created in 2018, the Jacques Lacarrière Literary Prize is awarded every two years to a French-language text of high literary standards, extending the writer's spirit. It is awarded to the author of a story, novel, collection of short stories, poetry or essay that opens up to the world in a spirit of sharing. A protean prize, in the image of the work left by Jacques Lacarrière.
Winner 2022
Matthieu Gounelle
Matthieu Gounelle works on meteorites at the Paris Museum. He has published several collections of poems and has evoked the destinies of stones that have fallen from the sky in various works (PUF, co-publication Flammarion / éditions du Muséum). An asteroid bears his name.
Excerpt from the book
"Everything in the Atacama tends to disappear. First the horizon, then the shadows that are barely visible. The meteorites we take from the Earth. The Changos, exterminated without a struggle, broken by smallpox and Catholicism, mines and alcoholism. And then there are the opponents of the Pinochet dictatorship, whose fragmented bones, though invisible, stand on the horizon like sacred stones, livid and forgetting nothing.
As for why these stories of the disappeared touch me so much, given that my family has nothing to do with Latin America or political activism, I'm not entirely sure. Except that someone is missing. And that this missing person is who I'm looking for, along with the meteorites".
2020
Michaël Ferrier
On 14 December 2020, the jury of the Jacques Lacarrière literary prize, chaired by Gil Jouanard (†), awarded Michaël Ferrier for his book Scrabble, published by Mercure de France in September 2019
Michaël Ferrier, born in 1967 in Strasbourg, is a French writer and essayist who lives in Tokyo, where he teaches French literature at Chuo University.
He spent his childhood in the Indian Ocean (Madagascar, Reunion, Comoros, Mauritius) and in Africa.
He is also the author of :
. François, Portrait d'un absent, Gallimard, 2018 - Prix Décembre 2018
. Mémoires d'outre-mer, Gallimard, 2015 - Franz-Hessel Prize 2015
. Fukushima, récit d'un désastre, Gallimard, 2012 - Prix Édouard-Glissant 2012
. Sympathy for the Ghost, Gallimard, 2010 - Prix littéraire de la Porte dorée 2011
. Le goût de Tokyo, Mercure de France, 2008
. Tokyo. Petits portraits de l'aube, Gallimard, 2004 - Prix de l'Asie 2005
Scrabble, a Chadian childhood
This is the story of a childhood in Chad, at the end of the 1970s, and of the end of the 1970s, in an extraordinarily beautiful, vibrant and exciting country. But then the civil war comes knocking at the door of the narrator's house, a child, who is the author.
Michaël Ferrier had been carrying this book with him for a long time, and in it he ties together several of the founding threads of his journey: this African initiation, "it was here that I made contact with the animals and with the land, and this trade has never left me" and, through it, the discovery of a relationship with the world that passes through the other. "Childhood opens up like a mango", it is that period of life when "the smallest detail can take you very far - I feel connected to all the breaths of the world. "he writes.
The jury was chaired by Gil Jouanard (†), writer, president of the association Chemins faisant. It included Marie-Hélène Fraïssé, author and producer at France Culture, Christian Garcin, writer, Sylvie Germain, writer, Élie Guillou, singer and poet, Sylvia Lipa-Lacarrière, actress, artistic delegate of the Chemins faisant association, Valérie Marin La Meslée, author, literary journalist at Le Point magazine, Abdourahman Waberi, writer, Bérangère Mérigot, acting director of the departmental library of Saône-et-Loire.
2018
Jean-Luc Raharimanana
In December 2018, the jury of the first edition of the Jacques Lacarrière literary prize awarded the Madagascan author Jean-Luc Raharimanana for his book Revenir, published by Rivages in March of the same year.
A tribute to crossbreeding and peace, a cry of distress and hope, this novel, bordering on autobiography, is a declaration of love to Madagascar and to literature.
Jean-Luc Raharimanana, born in Tananarive in 1967, is a French-speaking Malagasy writer.
A novelist, essayist and poet, Raharimanana is also the author of plays, musical tales and a stage director. In a violent and lyrical style, he describes the corruption and poverty on his island, with reminders of the country's painful history. Several of his works have been translated into German, English, Italian and Spanish.
In addition to his publications and theatrical creations, he is director of the Fragments collection at Vents d'Ailleurs. As a lecturer and translator, he travels the world to speak about writing and literature.
The jury was chaired by Gil Jouanard (†), writer, president of the association Chemins faisant. It included Marie-Hélène Fraïssé, author and producer at France Culture, Christian Garcin, writer, Sylvie Germain, writer, Élie Guillou, singer and poet, Sylvia Lipa-Lacarrière, actress, artistic delegate of the Chemins faisant association, Valérie Marin La Meslée, author, literary journalist at Le Point magazine, Abdourahman Waberi, writer, Bérangère Mérigot, acting director of the departmental library of Saône-et-Loire.
