Tuesday, September 6, 2022, the Goncourt jurors unveiled the first selection of the 15 novels in the running for the most prestigious and coveted French Literary Prize.

The Haitian novelist and poet Makenzy Orcel is in the first selection for his book "A Human Sum" at Éditions Rivages, 2022.

List of the First Selection of the Prix Goncourt 2022 :

Anne SERRE, Notre si chère vieille dame, Mercure de France

Brigitte GIRAUD, Vivre vite, Flammarion

Carole FIVES, Quelque chose à te dire, Gallimard

Cloé KORMAN, Les Presque Sœurs, Seuil

Emmanuel RUBEN, Les Méditerranéennes, Stock

Makenzy ORCEL, Une somme humaine, éditions Rivages

Monica SABOLO, La vie clandestine, Gallimard

Muriel BARBERY, Une heure de ferveur, Actes Sud

Nathan DEVERS, Les liens artificiels, Albin Michel

Pascale ROBERT-DIARD, La petite menteuse, L'Iconoclaste

Giuliano da EMPOLI, Le Mage du Kremlin, Gallimard

Grégoire BOUILLIER, Le cœur ne cède pas, Flammarion

Sabyl GHOUSSOUB, Beyrouth-sur-Seine, Stock

Sarah JOLLIEN-FARDEL, Sa préférée, Sabine Wespieser

Yves RAVEY, Taormine, Editions de Minuit

The next two selections for the Prix Goncourt 2022 will take place on October 5 and 26. The name of the person who will succeed Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Prix Goncourt 2021 for "La Plus secrète mémoire des hommes" will be revealed on Thursday, November 3, 2022.

"Une somme humaine" by Makenzy Orcel, Summary

The heroine's voice comes to us from beyond the grave. Both anonymous and embodied, it is the voice of one woman and of all women. She tells us in notebooks stolen from time and death a stolen childhood, a torn adolescence, a shattered life and destiny.

Having grown up in a provincial village where rumour and gossip reign, neglected by her parents, especially by her mother who prefers the roses in her garden, she hardly finds any comfort from her grandmother no more lovely. She escapes to Paris in hopes of leading a life free from the ghosts of the past. There she studied literature at the Sorbonne, found love with a man who had fled the war in Mali, experienced the working world, before finally undergoing the test of abandonment and sinking into poverty. irreversible wandering.

By giving us the autobiography of a dead woman in dazzling language, Makenzy Orcel takes us, through this "Somme humaine", the second part of a trilogy initiated by "L'Ombre animal", into the poetic belly of the world.

IH/ iciHaiti