Another day, another French literary prize: yesterday they announced the winners of the prix Médicis -- a threefer (fiction, non, and translated fiction).
Goncourt-finalist Titus n'aimait pas Bérénice, by Nathalie Azoulai took the fiction prize (six votes to three), and certainly sounds intriguing.
It's also always interesting to see what foreign fiction is prized abroad: the Femina, announced on Wednesday, went to Thirst, by Kerry Hudson, narrowly (6-5) beating out Martin Amis' The Zone of Interest, but the Médicis wasn't nearly as Anglophone: the French translation of Turkish author Hakan Günday's Daha took the prize -- with little English-language competition from the remaining finalistes; see also the Galaade publicity page. Günday has seemed an up-and-coming (on the international scene) Turkish author for a while now; I'm surprised ther haven't been any US/UK translations yet. (Well, you know, relatively surprised .....) See also this Time Out (Istanbul) Q & A with him.
Goncourt-finalist Titus n'aimait pas Bérénice, by Nathalie Azoulai took the fiction prize (six votes to three), and certainly sounds intriguing.
It's also always interesting to see what foreign fiction is prized abroad: the Femina, announced on Wednesday, went to Thirst, by Kerry Hudson, narrowly (6-5) beating out Martin Amis' The Zone of Interest, but the Médicis wasn't nearly as Anglophone: the French translation of Turkish author Hakan Günday's Daha took the prize -- with little English-language competition from the remaining finalistes; see also the Galaade publicity page. Günday has seemed an up-and-coming (on the international scene) Turkish author for a while now; I'm surprised ther haven't been any US/UK translations yet. (Well, you know, relatively surprised .....) See also this Time Out (Istanbul) Q & A with him.