Bleak teenage tale wins France´s top book prize
Paris -Nicolas Mathieu scooped France´s top Goncourt literary prize on Wednesday for his second novel, a coming-of-age tale set against a backdrop of industrial decline and teenage lust."Leurs enfants apres eux" (Their children after them) follows a group of teenagers growing up in the 1990s in Mathieu´s native eastern France.Mathieu, a 40-year-old ex-journalist, said he had spent "18 months locked up in a room" to write the book."And suddenly I find myself here like a rabbit caught in the headlights," he told a crowd of reporters in the famed Drouant restaurant in Paris, where the Goncourt is awarded each year.Set over four summers, the novel follows the friends as they dream of escaping a dreary industrial town where the blast furnaces have fallen silent.Their parents fare no better: one of their fathers, a laid-off metal worker, scrapes by on work as a gardener while bitterly drinking his sorrows away."I wanted to tell the story of the world I come from," said Mathieu.The Prix Goncourt is worth only a symbolic 10 euros ($11) but it guarantees huge book sales and unbeatable publicity for the winning author.Mathieu published his first novel "Aux animaux la guerre", which also deals with the fallout of globalisation in a declining French town, in 2014.Joking about the fact this is only his second book, Mathieu said: "I took a very long time finding out what I can write about."But having won his country´s most prestigious prize, "I'm now going to catch up all at once on my being slow," he said.
from The News International - World https://ift.tt/2PIvyfL
from The News International - World https://ift.tt/2PIvyfL
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