Brigitte Giraud's Vivre Vite Wins The Prix Goncourt 2022

By mainly showcasing the literary awards written in the English language, we've finally wondered what the French are reading these days. Their most prestigious award - the Prix Goncourt - might be the best indicator for your next French read. In 2022 it was awarded to Brigitte Giraud's Vivre Vite (Live Fast).

The autobiographical novel about the death of her husband in a motorbike accident, leaving her with their young son and a signed contract to buy a new family home enabled Brigitte Giraud to become only the 13th woman to win this oldest literary award in France during 120 years.

“When no disaster occurs, we move forward without looking back, we stare straight ahead at the horizon. When a tragedy occurs, we turn back, we come back to haunt the place, we proceed to the reconstruction. We want to understand the origin of each gesture, each decision. We rewind a hundred times. You become a specialist in cause and effect. We track down, we dissect, we autopsy. We want to know everything about human nature, the intimate and collective forces that make what happens happen,” Giraud writes.

The Prix Goncourt 2022 was actually predicted for the Italian - Swiss author Giuliano da Empoli for his Le Mage du Kremlin (The Wizard of the Kremlin) telling about the last 30 years of Putin's regime in Russia. The final voting of the jury ended in stalemate and the President of Goncourt Academy placed the deciding vote in favour of Brigitte Giraud.

The other two authors and novels shortlisted for the prize were Cloé Korman’s Les Presque Soeurs (The Almost Sisters) and Makenzy Orcel with Une Somme Humaine (A Human Sum).