Without a suit and tie, you would even confuse Mohamed Mbugal Sar, a 31-year-old Senegalese, with those African players who play in France.
Yes, the name sounded unfamiliar in the past, it sounds unfamiliar now, and it may sound unfamiliar in the future. This French version of the "Nobel Prize for Literature", the latest winner of the Goncourt Prize for Literature, is still taking the French niche route, which can be seen from the title of his award-winning work: "The Most Secret Memories of Humanity".
Of course, after counting the titles of the winning titles of the Goncourt Literary Prize, Saar's works are already quite grounded. Exactly 100 years ago, the Martinique writer René Maran won the Goncourt Prize for her book "Batouara", becoming the first black writer to win the award.
In 2021, Saar is also the black writer who won the award again a century later. He is also the first writer of sub-Saharan African descent to receive the Goncourt Prize for Literature.
However, in the eyes of the French, being compared with the Nobel Prize for Literature is the "greatest humiliation" for the Goncourt Prize. France, which is unique in the field of culture and art, is like an isolated island in Europa. It adheres to the values and aesthetic tastes of its own nation, and deliberately maintains a distance from American consumer culture, British stereotyped traditions and mainstream European literary and artistic trends. a relationship.
This kind of maverick is also reflected in the bonus of the Goncourt Prize for Literature. The winners have gone through untold hardships and written more than 10 million words. Once they won the award, they became famous, but the denomination of the prize is astonishing: 10 euros.
"Anomalous" Literary Tradition
The Goncourt Award has 10 judges, 7 men and 3 women.
Although the prize money is only 10 euros, once the work is awarded, the author can usually sell hundreds of thousands of books by virtue of his big name.
For example, the novel "L'Anomalie" by French writer Hervé Le Tellier, winner of the 2020 Goncourt Prize for Literature, "tortures this earth and the universe by asking questions." ". This kind of writing style with wide-open brains and "clear brain circuits" is favored by French readers and sold more than 1 million copies. It is also Margaret Duras in 1984. After the Goncourt Literary Award, the award-winning work became a classic case of the best-selling book that year.
The case of "Anomalous" is indeed "abnormal" in the history of the Goncourt Prize—in layman's terms, this is not a literary award that gave birth to a best-selling book, or a great writer.
Talking about French writers from the 20th century today, the common reader is likely to have the following names in mind: Romain Rolland, Gide, Camus, Sartre, and the still-living Le Clézio. But unfortunately, none of the above names has anything to do with the Goncourt Award. It's no wonder that many French people will laugh at the "Nobel Prize"——
In the eyes of the French, being compared with the Nobel Prize for Literature is the "greatest humiliation" for the Goncourt Prize.
Le Trier, winner of the 2020 Goncourt Prize
"Sartre turned down the Nobel Prize for Literature, he's great. But he's also bad because he hasn't even been nominated for the Goncourt Prize!"
Masters on the Winners List
Jokes aside, the Goncourt Literary Prize was established in 1903, but its first selection committee was star-studded — Flaubert, Zola, and Todd were among the great writers.
The Goncourt Prize for Literature was established in 1874 by the 19th-century French writer Edmond de Goncourt in memory of his younger brother Jules de Goncourt. He used his estate as a fund to set up a Goncourt Academy, which later became the Goncourt Literary Prize Selection Committee. The Goncourt Literary Prize is issued once a year, among the "six major" French Literary Awards (Le Naudot Literary Award, Fermina Literary Award, Goncourt Literary Award, Medici Literary Award, French Academy Fiction Award, Alliance Literary Award ) has the highest status and reputation, and the maturity of commercial transformation in the future will of course be the highest.
If you look carefully at the past winners of the Goncourt Prize, you can still find a few big names, such as Marcel Proust in 1919, with "Beside the Girls" (Volume 2 of "Reminiscence of the Years Like Water") won the award, but as the most famous winner of the Goncourt Prize, Proust was also the most controversial at the time: when he won the award, he was 48 years old, and Goncourt was the most famous. The original intention of the Goul Literature Prize was to encourage a new generation of "four-minded youth" with potential, talent, passion and feelings in the fields of "naturalistic fiction, social history and art criticism".
The first black winner of the Goncourt Prize - René Maran
Some people say that the Goncourt Prize is a literary prize with the coordinates of "century".
It is not difficult to understand that when the 48-year-old "mature man" Proust won the Goncourt Award, the French media would be in an uproar: 48 years old, he is not young anymore!
Some people say that the Goncourt Prize is a literary prize with the coordinates of "century". Just as 100 years ago, René Maran became the first black writer to win the prize; and exactly 100 years later, Sal became the second black writer to win the prize. 100 years later, a French writer who has only just begun his writing career has become the winner of the Goncourt Prize.
Nicola Mathew, 40, wasn't even a professional writer before. His award-winning memoir-style novel "The Children After Them" became the first work for the outside world to know Matthew. And when microphones and recorders flocked, Matthew was in a trance: 5 years ago, he hadn't even found the direction of his life - at that time, he was still a wage earner who relied on odd jobs to maintain his life. , he has tasted the "Cruel Bottom Story".
Unconventional awards
Sal, who won this year's award, is 10 years younger than Matthew. He was a scholar during his school days. He graduated from the French Institute of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences. The award-winning work "The Most Secret Memory of Humanity" is only the last part of his "Writing Four Parts". The first three are: Describing Sa "Around the Earth," about life in the Helle region, a fictional town controlled by Islamic jihadist militias; "Silence of the Choir," which presents the daily lives of African immigrants in Sicily; people".
Although it has always been known for "playing cards out of common sense" and "giving awards out of common sense", the Goncourt Award in 2017 has received keen attention from Chinese readers.
At the end of 2016, Moroccan female writer Leila Slimani won the Goncourt Prize. Her winning novel is like a "sad prophecy", which is exactly the same as the hot event in China the next year - the Hangzhou nanny arson case.
Let’s take a look at Slimani’s creative career by first pressing this novel called “Song of Gentleness”:
Moroccan writer Leila Slimani
In 2011, while breastfeeding his newborn son, Slimani saw in the news the sexual assault of a waitress by French politician Kahn. She then quickly wrote her first novel, The Garden of the Ogre, within a few months. The protagonist of the book, Adele, a French female journalist, lives affluently in Paris and lives a double life of "wasting laziness during the day and singing and singing at night".
Slimani recorded the urban life of a female sex addict, who believed that "once a person's soul is lost, the body becomes a cage for people to be imprisoned".
In 2012, the Puerto Rican babysitter murder case in New York made her think again, and describe a tragic story similar to the 2017 Hangzhou babysitter arson case: the
nanny Louis and Miriam's family of four live in In a high-end residence in Paris, Miriam, a lawyer, was reluctant to give up her job after giving birth, so she discussed with her husband Paul, a music producer, to hire a nanny to take care of the child. Diligent and patient out-of-town nanny Louis quickly conquered the Miriam family after passing the interview.
In order to please the children, she is willing to twist her body and pretend to be a savage; she can easily handle the household chores that two people can barely accomplish; Yam and her husband are full of praise. "Our nanny is a fairy." Lewis gets the highest praise he can get in the novel.
But little is known about the life trajectory of this almost flawless nanny, Louis: After her husband died, she left her with a large unpaid debt; her only daughter did not understand her and left her; she was in Paris The landlord who rents a house in the suburbs is picky about her; the nannies of other families ignore her and don't get close to her...
After gaining the trust of the Miriam family, Louis has gained equality in class. Confident that the family was extremely dependent on her, she began to look forward to more possible privileges and rewards. But Miriam and Paul, a middle-class couple in Paris, did not want the nanny to intervene too much in their daily life, so the relationship with the nanny gradually turned from intimacy to indifference.
Abandoned by the mainstream class again, coupled with debt and full of social prejudice, the weak nanny finally kills.
"Frankly speaking, similar things are happening in this world every moment, and it is inevitable in any era. All events are like countless small dots, and after frequent occurrence, they eventually converge into a plane that no one can ignore. plane," Slimani said.
The Goncourt Award, which has always "played against common sense", awarded the award to such a "prophet" in 2016. Consistent with the "irrational award" of France's most lofty literary award, Slimani is not a professional writer, but her daily work is indeed related to writing and recording.
"I used to be a reporter, and this also made me realize that the hardest thing is the distance between you and the facts. It is very important to grasp and maintain that sense of proportion - when you face a tragedy, your attitude is How? Can you stay objective? Will you be overwhelmed by the horrific truths? As a journalist, I can't be easily assimilated by news events; as a novelist, too, that's the bottom line."
