Giuliano da Empoli wins the Grand Prize for the Novel of the French Academy

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Giuliano da Empoli wins the Grand Prize for the Novel

The French Academy awarded Thursday, October 27 its Grand Prize to a first novel by the Italian-Swiss writer Giuliano da Empoli who has been snapping up in bookstores for six months. The book is called “Le Mage du Kremlin”, a fiction about power in Russia where almost all the characters are real and is published by Gallimard.

With The Mage of the KremlinGiuliano da Empoli succeeded in his first novel in reconciling his two passions, literature and politics while ensuring tremendous public and critical success, twenty translation contracts are in progress.

The 49-year-old author, accustomed to political essays, former adviser to the Italian statesman Matteo Renzi, was inspired by a former éminence grise of Vladimir Putin to imagine his fictional character baptized Vadim Baranov, inspired by Vladislav Surkov, co-founder of the United Russia party of the current Russian president. In the story, Vadim Baranov helped bring the head of the Kremlin to power and delivers his twilight secrets on absolutism to a discreet narrator.

Analysis of the power of Tsar »

The novel released last April was written well before the start of the war in Ukraine, but it delivers keys to understanding the often opaque power games in Russia. Giuliano da Empoli analyzes each cog in the power of the “Tsar”, this is how the Russian president is designated in the novel and revisits known episodes of his reign from the inside or gravitates to quite real and sometimes terrifying figures.

The Mage of the Kremlin delivers a lucid reflection on the psychology and experience of often limitless power in Russia, carried by a style which today has earned its author the honors of the French academy. Giuliano da Empoli is also one of the four finalists for the 2022 edition of the prestigious Goncourt Prize which will be announced on November 3.

(and withAFP)



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