It was in 2019 that Maxime Chattam agreed to sponsor the prize 20 minutes of the novel which has since rewarded, each year, an unpublished manuscript on an imposed theme. “What made me want to participate in the prize was the idea of spreading culture in a popular newspaper, which everyone knows and which everyone has access to because it is everywhere and ‘It’s free, explains the novelist known for his thrillers bordering on fantasy. “Culture”, “popular”, “everyone”, these are values that speak to me. So, if there is a literary prize that could make sense to me, it was particularly this one. A prize that has already contributed to revealing two authors: Estelle Tolliac for Moon black and Moon Blue in 2020, Giselda Gargano for The Final Frontier in 2021, published by our partner New Authors.
“This newspaper, but who do we pay for it? »
Between Maxime Chattam and 20 minutes, it is actually a story that has lasted… for twenty years! “I was still quite young, remembers the writer who was just beginning his career. I wasn’t too careful, but when I saw the newspaper distributed at the exit of the metro, I asked myself: but who is paying for it? I thought they wanted to extract money from me, I hadn’t understood the concept… And little by little, it became a habit, a ritual and you end up recreating your daily life somewhere. At the time, I was going to work in the morning and at the station, I ended up buying less the newspaper I was buying and looking for 20 minutes in the little newspaper rack. Except that everyone ended up getting into gear: there weren’t any left, so we passed it on to the train. “Have you finished it?” “Thanks, that’s nice.” We read the neighbour’s newspaper, in short… It recreated a bit of social fabric on the train. Of course, now we can read the news on the phone, and we have 20 minutes also on the phone, but these memories of exchanges around paper for someone who loves paper, it’s something I will never forget…”