Futuristic thriller wins French literary award

L'Anomalie sees a hit man, a Nigerian pop star and a writer land in New York only to find that their flight had already arrived three months earlier

Paris: A futuristic thriller about the double lives of passengers aboard a flight from Paris to New York won France’s top literary award, the Prix Goncourt, which was awarded by video link on Monday. The winner was announced two days after the French government eased a monthlong coronavirus lockdown, allowing bookshops, which had complained bitterly about the restrictions, to reopen.

Herve Le Tellier, a 63-year-old former journalist and mathematician, won the country’s oldest literary prize for L’Anomalie, his eighth novel. Tellier had been tipped for glory with a page-turner of a novel in which a hit man, a Nigerian pop star and a writer land in New York only to find that their flight – and other versions of their selves – had already arrived three months earlier.

---

“The idea is that since Trump is there and is the cause of the world’s destruction, the vision of the book is to propose another version of the world, where Biden is president. That’s one possible way of reading it,” he said by video link.

Jury chairman Didier Decoin said that the novel had a “real cinematic dimension” and that he hoped it would be adapted for the big screen. Because of the Covid-19 restrictions, the 10-person Goncourt jury was forced to forgo its traditional slap-up awards lunch at the Drouant restaurant in central Paris.

Instead, they huddled over video link from their homes. They had been due to name the winner on November 10, but to show solidarity with booksellers they held off until bookshops were allowed reopen at the weekend, along with vendors of other “non-essential” goods. Restaurants and cafes remain closed.

Tellier won eight of the 10 votes cast by the jurors. Two members of the academy chose the fictional memoirs of a senior Moroccan civil servant by Mael Renouard, a former speech writer for French ex-prime minister Francois Fillon. While Tellier gets a paltry 10 euros ($12) in prize money, the award invariably catapults the winner to the top of the best-seller lists.