The Femina jury like the readers of 20 minutes This morning. sad tiger by Neige Sinno is the 2023 winner of this literary prize awarded this Monday at the Carnavalet museum in Paris. Created in 1904 and made up of an all-female jury, this award was created in reaction to the perceived misogynistic perception of the Prix Goncourt jury. The jurors of the Prix Femina, who elected it in the first round by nine votes out of twelve, specifically highlighted “the brilliance of the book, its strength, and an honesty so intense that it even leaves room for humor” .
“The subject that my book deals with is not a subject for women, nor for men, nor for any other,” declared Neige Sinno after the award was announced. And the author smiled in front of the strictly female configuration of the jury which awarded her. “It reminds me of my thesis defense where there were also only women among the professors. […] It’s a source of pride, in addition, to be encouraged,” she added.
Endowed with exceptional writing qualities, Sad Tiger addresses the painful theme of incest of which the author was a victim in her childhood, combining narrative finesse and the rigor of an essay.
A book already awarded
Already winner of the Literary Prize of World and the Novel Prize InrockuptiblesNeige Sinno is still in the running with her book for the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Médicis which will be awarded this Tuesday and Thursday respectively, but her chances have become lower since the Femina was awarded this Monday.
The foreign Femina, for its part, returned to Sentence by Louise Erdrich (translated from the American by Sarah Gurcel), published by Albin Michel and Femina essay at Anger and Forgetting by Hugo Micheron, published by Gallimard.
The Femina jury is chaired by Évelyne Bloch-Dano and vice-chaired by Paula Jacques with this year Claire Gallois, Nathalie Azoulai, Christine Jordis, Scholastique Mukasonga, Mona Ozouf, Josyane Savigneau, Patricia Reznikov, Jeanne Benameur, Julie Wolkenstein and Brigitte Giraud , winner of the Goncourt 2022 for Live Fast.