Les Champs d’honneur

Jean Rouaud’s (b. 1952) first novel, Les Champs d’honneur, surprised critics with its limpid, lyrical prose, rooted in a family memory marked by the mourning of the Great War. Published in midsummer, Françoise Giroud wrote as early as August that “the rumor spreads, flattering, and resonates through the most powerful advertising network, word of mouth; some twenty thousand readers bought Les Champs d’honneur in a month, a considerable figure for the first novel of an unknown author.”

Critics were divided: some hailed a “miraculous” book that restored to literature its power of emotion and memory, while others suspected an “editorial coup” orchestrated by Jérôme Lindon, head of Éditions de Minuit, seeking renewal after the successes of the Nouveau Roman and Duras. This controversy soon faded, as opinion proved nearly unanimous. On 6 November 1990, on the first ballot and by an almost unanimous vote (only two votes went to Philippe Labro), the Académie Goncourt propelled this unknown author, a newspaper vendor on the rue de Flandre, into the literary spotlight. Sales exploded (more than 500,000 copies), securing another unexpected success for Minuit.