L’Adoration

Prix Goncourt 1965. L’Adoration is the first novel by Jacques Borel (1925–2002), a teacher and critic, and it is immediately marked by an autobiographical vein. The book explores a son’s relationship with his mother, in a narrative both intimate and universal, blending childhood memories with a meditation on filial love, memory and the weight of the past. Reviewing the book on Le Masque et la plume on 21 November 1965, the day before the prize was announced, Guy Dumur praised its “profound honesty, written in absolutely excellent prose… one is carried along by this perfect book, a handcrafted book, with a beginning and an end, a moving and beautiful book, since it recounts, without artifice or affectation, the life of a man, a child, an adolescent, a young man.”

By crowning this sensitive, stripped-down text on the fifth ballot, the Académie Goncourt surprised many: the prize had rarely before gone to so intimate a novel, far from the great social or political frescoes. L’Adoration appeared in a new series, “Le Chemin,” directed by Georges Lambrichs. A second title in the series would later win the Prix Goncourt: La Dentellière by Pascal Lainé; another would win the Prix Renaudot: Le Procès-verbal by J.-M.G. Le Clézio.

A precious deluxe copy of the post-Goncourt printing: one of the ten copies for the jury members, this one belonging to Raymond Queneau.