Ingrid Caven
First printing, with no deluxe-paper copies.
Signed presentation inscription: “Pour Jacques Brenner avec mon attentive sympathie, Jean-Jacques Schuhl.”
Prix Goncourt 2000. Awarded on the sixth ballot with 4 votes, ahead of Kourouma (Allah n’est pas obligé, 3 votes, which won the Renaudot the same day), Gérard de Cortanze (Cyclone, 2) and Amélie Nothomb (Métaphysique des tubes, 1), and carried by the support of the jury’s president, François Nourissier, the prize crowned for the first time a title from the “L’Infini” series edited by Philippe Sollers.
Published after nearly twenty years of editorial silence, Ingrid Caven marked a genuine return to favor for the cult author of Rose Poussière (1972). The text, poised between novel, portrait and collage, is an imagined biography of the singer and actress Ingrid Caven — former wife of R. W. Fassbinder, muse of Yves Saint Laurent, and later Schuhl’s own companion, as well as a magnetic figure of postwar European art. The writing is fragmentary, mixing memories, impressions, aphorisms and reminiscences, in a montage aesthetic evoking both Fassbinder’s cinema and cabaret music.
Publisher’s wraparound band preserved.