Un grand pas vers le Bon Dieu
Signed presentation inscription: “À Emmanuel Robles, respectueusement, avec l'espoir qu'il aimera ce retour au roman "aventureux" et sans cesse [?] d'une idée vivante [?] à une vitalité sans pareille. Aimer les gens. Les vouloir proches et fraternels. Jean Vautrin.”
Having already won the Goncourt for a short story three years earlier with Baby Boom, Jean Vautrin — the pen name of Jean Herman — received the “real” Prix Goncourt on 20 November 1989, on the second ballot, by eight votes to two over Pascal Quignard (for Les Escaliers de Chambord). In this vivid, picaresque saga of more than a thousand pages, Vautrin composes a family and social epic in which outcasts, farmers and popular figures mingle, set in a Southwest brimming with verve and vitality.
Trained as a filmmaker at IDHEC, Vautrin directed several films (Adieu l’ami, 1968) before turning increasingly to screenwriting, notably for Bertrand Tavernier’s Coup de torchon and Claude Miller’s Garde à vue.
Accompanied by: the list of guests at the prize dinner with the votes from both rounds.