Pareils à des enfants…
One of the copies printed for the press (service de presse).
On 20 December, in an occupied and starving Paris, the Académie Goncourt awarded its prize to Marc Bernard, by 7 votes to 1 for Germaine Beaumont and 1 for Lucien Rebatet. The author learned the news on the radio from the provinces: for safety reasons, he did not travel to Paris, but the prize money allowed him to save his family from destitution. The novel, printed in a small first edition, sold out within days.
Through the story of Léonard, known as Nanay, a boy from the working-class districts of Nîmes at the turn of the twentieth century, Marc Bernard offers an autobiographical coming-of-age narrative: his parents’ separation, poverty, an apprenticeship with a shoemaker, sensual discoveries and intimate tragedies. Through this harsh but never hopeless childhood emerges a tribute to the dignity of ordinary people, written in a simple and luminous style. An excellent 38th Prix Goncourt, awarded in a context marked by censorship and war, and one that remains a singular Goncourt: without direct allusion to the ongoing conflict, it is deeply steeped in popular memory and the fellowship of the humble.
From the “Prix Goncourt” library of Gérard Pouguet, with bookplate.
Small loss at the foot of the front wrapper.