such a great video. Equally informative (awards are so complicatedTT) and entertaining. Wpuld have loved to see the Booker Interantionak featured as well.
Melanie.. enjoyable video. i think it would be interesting to do one on the French prize scene. They have a crazy number of prizes with interesting histories, and the French seem to take them much more seriously. The winners of the main ones will get translated, how well do they do?
Hmmm…interesting idea! I didn’t realize that French had so many prizes. Le Prix Goncourt is one I ran across that I thought was really cool, but I’ll have to look into the rest.
@@DrawntoBooks The Prix Goncourt is still the big one. It is always announced in the same restaurant. The Prix Renaudot was invented by people eating in the same restaurant who were bored of waiting for the result. They pick a runner up in case their first pick is the same as the Goncourt. There's various sub-prizes of the Renaudot, as with the Goncourt. For example, they both have "Prix des Lycéens", voted for by high school students. The Prix Femina was set up by women who thought the Prix Goncourt jury was misogynist. It has a female jury, but it does not only give prizes to women. It also has a Prix des Lycéens, and also e.g. a Prix Anglais (or "Prix Northcliffe") designed to tell French people about English novels. The Goncourt and the Femina used to have battles over one pre-empting the other in choice of winner, but since 2000 they have an agreement to announce first in alternate year. Together, I think the Goncourt, Renaudot and Femina are the big three. But there's LOADS of others. They are generally given out in the "rentrée", the book publishing season in the autumn. Some distinguish themselves by being handed out at other times. Some are handed out by cities. The Prix Interallié was supposedly founded by people bored waiting for the Prix Femina in another restaurant. The Prix Medici is for an author's debut work and given out on the same day as the Femina in the same hotel. The Grand Prix du Roman des Académies Françaises is given out by 12 members of the Academy (the "guardians of the French language"), and traditionally opens the "rentrée". The prize caused controversy in 2014 by being given to Joël Dicker, who is Swiss, and doesn't use the various past tenses correctly. But not as much controversy as the Renaudot giving it to a paedophile in 2013. The Prix Deux Magots arrives in January and is given out at another famous Paris restaurant (ate their last year, boy it's expensive, but I like the way it's a bookshop and restaurant/bar at the same time). It's supposed to have been a reaction to the Goncourt being too "academic". Literally hundreds of others.. Prix France Culture-Telerama for writers who aren't as well known as they should be. Prix du Quai des Orfèvres for a "polar" (police novel). Prix des Libraires is voted for entirely by people who work in independent bookshops. They give it out in May to avoid giving it to anything that won another award. The prize is that the shops all promote the winner. French books are often published with a little wrapper slip to say what prizes they've won. With so many prizes, you're naked without one.
