Pareils à des enfants…
One of the copies printed for the press.
On 20 December, in an occupied and starving Paris, the Académie Goncourt awarded its prize to Marc Bernard, with 7 votes against 1 for Germaine Beaumont and 1 for Lucien Rebatet. The author learned the news on the radio from the provinces: for reasons of safety, 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 child from the working-class neighborhoods of Nîmes in the early 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 shines a hymn to the dignity of the humble, 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 ordinary people.
From the “Prix Goncourt” library of Gérard Pouguet, with bookplate.