Les Champs d’honneur
One of 47 deluxe copies on vergé de Vizille paper (no. 28).
Signed presentation inscription: “Pour Grégory - c'est dommage de griffer un si beau papier, mais le cœur est là. Jean Rouaud, 22 Sept. 90.”
Winner of the 1990 Prix Goncourt, and certainly one of the great French books of that decade — indeed of the end of the century — on a subject often treated and regularly honored by the Académie Goncourt: the Great War.
As early as August 1990, Françoise Giroud wrote that “the word is spreading, flattering, and resonating through the most powerful of all advertising circuits, word of mouth; some twenty thousand readers buy Les Champs d’honneur in a single month, a considerable figure for the first novel of an unknown author… Here is Jean Rouaud borne on the wings of fame.”
The praise was almost unanimous, from readers and peers alike. The Prix Goncourt rewarded, and transformed the life of, the newspaper-kiosk owner of the rue de Flandre (renamed Avenue de Flandre in 1994), “a balcony over the street,” as he called it.
A rare deluxe copy with a strictly contemporary inscription — predating the award of the prize.
Fine condition.