La Descente du fleuve
Signed presentation inscription: “Pour Monsieur François Mitterrand, mon Président, mon protecteur, mon grand-maître et, s'il le veut bien, mon parrain, en témoignage de mon respectueux attachement, Pierre Moinot.”
A senior civil servant and member of the Académie française (elected 1982), Pierre Moinot began his literary career with Armes et bagages in 1952, encouraged by Camus, and went on to build a body of novels and short stories, largely removed from literary society, culminating in the Prix Femina 1979 for Le Guetteur d’ombre. His other decisive encounter was with André Malraux: Moinot served as his adviser at the Ministry of Culture in 1959, where together they established support for cinema, the direction of theaters and cultural affairs, and the first Maison de la Culture. Close to the left after 1981, he maintained a relationship of mutual respect and esteem with François Mitterrand, who attended his election to the Académie française on January 21, 1982, to the seat of René Clair.
He was awarded the Grand Prix Jean Giono in 2004 for Coup d’État, an indictment of tyranny.