The jury of France's most prestigious literary prize announced the names of the four finalists from Beirut on Tuesday. The Académie Goncourt was in the Lebanese capital for the first edition of a literary festival organised by the French Institute.
The Académie Goncourt moved out of Paris for the first time "in solidarity" with the French-speaking city of Beirut, which was badly damaged by a chemical explosion in August 2020.
Apart from the surroundings, nothing has been changed. The Goncourt jurors have chosen four novels, as follows:
Giuliano da Empoli for her book Le Mage du Kremlin (Gallimard), Brigitte Giraud for Vivre vite (Flammarion), Cloé Korman for Les Presque Sœurs (Seuil) and Makenzy Orcel for Une somme humaine (Rivages).
La troisième sélection du Prix Goncourt📕📗📘 pic.twitter.com/knC3ddnHhI
— Académie Goncourt (@AcadGoncourt) October 25, 2022
Four novels
Italian-Swiss author Giuliano da Empoli, with Le Mage du Kremlin, a novel published in April, tells the story of a fictitious adviser to Vladimir Putin, offering an opportunity to look back at the history of Russia since the break-up of the Soviet Union.
In Vivre vite, Brigitte Giraud remembers the last days of her husband, killed in a motorbike accident in 1999, and the aftermath of that tragedy.
Cloé Korman's Les presque soeurs is an investigation into child victims of the Shoah who were cousins of her father.
Haitian Makenzy Orcel in Une somme humaine, gives a woman inhabited by poetry and violence a voice from beyond the grave.
The name of the winner will be announced, as every year, at the Drouant restaurant in Paris on 3 November.
