When the dust settles (and the foreign rights sales have been completed), I suspect it'll be Pierre Lemaitre's Au revoir là-haut that emerges as the memorable 2013 French title (see the Albin Michel publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.fr), and at some 576 pages the prix Goncourt long-long-listed title is certainly a heap of a book.
But the critical success, at least in these early days of the fall publishing season, is a book that dwarfs it, what Le Figaro calls: "le Léviathan de la rentrée": Yann Moix's Naissance, weighing in at 1.3 kilos and 1142 pages.
(Yes, the "ultra-long novel" [pace] is alive and well in France as well.)
The long (and long-long ...) lists of the biggest French prizes -- Goncourt, Renaudot, Médicis -- are now all out (see also my mention below), and the only one to hit the trifecta, making all three (and bonus-prize Décembre too) is Naissance (though the Lemaitre did manage the double that counts, Goncourt and Renaudot -- as did Frédéric Verger, with Arden (480 pages, yet another World War II story ...; see the Gallimard publicity page)). Sure, in the first rentrée-week's sales it couldn't crack the top 30 (Lemaitre came in fifth (3600 copies sold), Nothomb second) -- but it only went on sale two days into that week ..... The stunning four-prize-nods -- in a year with relatively little overlap among the longlists -- should help get it more review attention and sales.
Apparently an autobiographical work, of the shaping of author Yann Moix in his earliest days (yes, from 'birth' on ...), one of the few reviews already out -- Adrien Gombeaud's in Les Echos -- says it's the 'literary equivalent' of Andy Warhol's Empire (six hours of film stretched into eight by going slow motion ...) and does call it a: "roman interminable".
Since none of Moix's earlier works appear to have been translated into English -- not even the much more manageable (and surely intriguing) Cinquante ans dans la peau de Michael Jackson -- this doesn't seem the likeliest of candidates to ever make it into English (it would probably take a serious prize-sweep to force the issue), but you can get your French copy from Amazon.fr.
The long (and long-long ...) lists of the biggest French prizes -- Goncourt, Renaudot, Médicis -- are now all out (see also my mention below), and the only one to hit the trifecta, making all three (and bonus-prize Décembre too) is Naissance (though the Lemaitre did manage the double that counts, Goncourt and Renaudot -- as did Frédéric Verger, with Arden (480 pages, yet another World War II story ...; see the Gallimard publicity page)). Sure, in the first rentrée-week's sales it couldn't crack the top 30 (Lemaitre came in fifth (3600 copies sold), Nothomb second) -- but it only went on sale two days into that week ..... The stunning four-prize-nods -- in a year with relatively little overlap among the longlists -- should help get it more review attention and sales.
Apparently an autobiographical work, of the shaping of author Yann Moix in his earliest days (yes, from 'birth' on ...), one of the few reviews already out -- Adrien Gombeaud's in Les Echos -- says it's the 'literary equivalent' of Andy Warhol's Empire (six hours of film stretched into eight by going slow motion ...) and does call it a: "roman interminable".
Since none of Moix's earlier works appear to have been translated into English -- not even the much more manageable (and surely intriguing) Cinquante ans dans la peau de Michael Jackson -- this doesn't seem the likeliest of candidates to ever make it into English (it would probably take a serious prize-sweep to force the issue), but you can get your French copy from Amazon.fr.