La Girafe
Signed presentation inscription: “Pour Sylvie Genevoix [La Girafe] esquisse un pas de deux. Sympathis [sic]. Marie Nimier.”
It all begins under the sign of Edmond Rostand: “There is no great love but in the shadow of a great dream.” This is a fable without a moral, joyfully unwholesome, plunging into the fabulous as a child plunges into daydreams, moving from the Vincennes zoo to the Bibliothèque nationale by way of the Musée d’Histoire naturelle.
Marie Nimier’s second book, La Girafe marked her entry into literary recognition; the novel appeared on the Prix Goncourt shortlist, among the three finalists that year. The prize ultimately went to Tahar Ben Jelloun’s La Nuit sacrée, ahead of Nimier and Angelo Rinaldi’s Les Roses de Pline.
A fine copy with a distinguished editorial provenance: Sylvie Genevoix, a journalist for Le Figaro and L’Express, served as literary director at Éditions Albin Michel, which she joined in 1992. She is the daughter of the novelist and academician Maurice Genevoix, author of Raboliot and Ceux de 14.