What is the relationship between the Académie française which awarded it last week, the Académie Goncourt which will perhaps reward it on Thursday and the readers of 20 minutes who vote for it this Wednesday? All worship The Mage of the Kremlinthe first novel that looks like a phenomenon with its fifteen reprints since its release in April.
It must be said that its author Giuliano da Empoli, an Italian-Swiss political adviser and teacher at Sciences Po Paris, invites his reader to discover what may be “in Putin’s head”, no less. And even if the novel, inspired by the confessions of the ideologist Vladislav Surkov, was written before the war in Ukraine, the facts reported, presented as authentic, shed light on the current situation in Russia.
“A human and carnivorous kettle”
We understand that our readers, keen on deciphering the news, were seduced by this book. They gave him 33% of their votes, like Marie-France who liked “to dive into a human and carnivorous kettle submitted, in the last resort, to the only man in Russia who never drinks (although what he drinks directly from the bottle, that’s power)” and “to slip into his cognitive circuits, into his affects, into his relationship to the body and to strength as well as in his absence of state of mind. »
Comes next A human sum by Makenzy Orcel (28% of the votes), an ambitious novel about suffering, misery and injustice in the manner of a 21st century Balzac or Zola. “It’s an original novel in its form which tells the story of a woman and through her many women and which depicts contemporary French society without concession”, underlines Michelle for whom it is also “the work of ‘a real writer who writes in a language that is very elaborate but understandable by all’.
“Both fragile and strong”
Two more intimate and more personal novels follow, no doubt, but oh so moving: live fast by Catherine Giraud on the reproaches that the author attributes to herself in the motorcycle accident which killed her husband, obtains 22% of the votes. “A beautiful book on fidelity to the loved one, underlines Christiane. Even if she continues her life without him, he will never be forgotten. This book, written by a woman who is both fragile and strong, is well written and heartbreaking. »
Last but not least, with 17% of your votes, The Almost Sisters, on the culpable disappearance of his father’s Jewish cousins and their friends during the roundups of the years 1942-1944. A “poignant and very touching” novel for Emma, as well as for Blandine who voted for it because she had “loved Postcard ” last year. Anne Berest’s novel “should have had the Goncourt”, according to her, before being “fortunately rewarded by the Goncourt for high school students”.