L’Art français de la guerre

L’Art français de la guerre is a vast fresco in which a present-day narrator converses with Victorien Salagnon, a veteran of the wars in Indochina and Algeria. Through the twin apprenticeships of painting and storytelling, Jenni summons half a century of military and political history to examine what colonial conflicts left behind in bodies, words and “national identity”: “a naturalist novel in its method… as harrowing as a police report, and a spectacular entry into literature,” as Bernard Pivot put it.

A biology teacher in Lyon, Jenni had until then described himself as a “Sunday writer.” Five years of writing, a manuscript of nearly 700 pages sent by post to a single publisher — Gallimard, then celebrating its centenary — and it quickly became clear: this would be the sensation of the literary season. On 2 November, the Académie Goncourt awarded him the prize on the first ballot, with 5 votes. Even before the verdict, the novel had already found a wide readership; the very first printing of June 2011 (an uncommon one) was followed by numerous reprints, and more than 60,000 copies had already found readers.