The Académie Goncourt is once again complete. Following the departure of Patrick Rambaud, who had given up his seat for health reasons, the jury which awards the most prestigious literary prizes each year has just elected Christine Angot, 64, 10th member and 4th woman of the literary assembly.
Sublime for some, detestable for others, Christine Angot leaves no one indifferent. Both by the radicality of his work and by the singularity of his person.
Revealed in 1999 with her story Incestwhere she revealed the rapes that her father had subjected her to as a teenager, the flayed writer was one of the first to tackle this subject head-on, which she never stopped delving into in the following books.
Until the last one, The Journey to the East, awarded in 2021 by the Prix Médicis. A literary fight that she has always carried out with firmness, her dark eyes, sometimes hidden behind a wick, a rare smile and a high voice.
A word that she also put at the service of political harangue or media chronicle, dividing her audience.
Without concession, putting the intimate at the heart of literature, Christine Angot will nevertheless have to compose with the other members of Goncourt, six men and three women, to choose the next or the next winner in a few months. A prize that now can never be crowned again.
►Archive: “A week of vacation” by Christine Angot, writing and reality (2015)