Le Chasseur Zéro

The 1996 Prix Goncourt was a surprise: it crowned a first novel, by the then-unknown Pascale Roze, a choice praised for its independence but hotly debated both in literary circles and at the table at Drouant. François Nourrissier, in his first year as president of the Académie Goncourt, cast his deciding double vote on the third ballot, against Eduardo Manet’s Rhapsodie cubaine. A novel of obsession, Le Chasseur Zéro opens on a traumatic memory: the roar of a kamikaze plane, a Mitsubishi Zero, crashing in April 1945 onto the aircraft carrier Maryland off Okinawa. The heroine’s father dies in the attack, and that muffled, ghostly sound haunts his daughter for the rest of her life, leaving an invisible mark on the generations that follow.

On publication, the novel went largely unnoticed: on 11 November, Pascale Roze herself confided to Claude Cherki, CEO of Albin Michel, her dismay after the Brive book fair, where in three days she had signed only four copies of her book — while Cavanna, seated next to her, never stopped signing. The following day, the Goncourt changed her fate. It marked the end of years of struggle, during which her manuscripts had been rejected and she had lived alternately on unemployment benefits for entertainment-industry workers and on her earnings as an actress. Le Chasseur Zéro went on to a meteoric success, selling more than 300,000 copies after the prize — a sudden recognition and an abrupt passage from obscurity into the light.

With this book, Albin Michel won its second Goncourt in three years, after Didier Van Cauwelaert’s Un aller simple (1994). For the occasion, a confidential printing of 20 copies was produced, in addition to ten copies for the members of the Goncourt jury.