Dublin Literary Award: the choice of the Bpi rewarded!
Alice Zeniter, 2022 winner with L'Art de perdre (The Art of Losing)

The Dublin Literary Award is a prize that has been awarded each year since 1994 to novels selected by librarians around the world, and which have benefited from an adaptation in English. At stake: an endowment of 100,000 euros for the winner, making it one of the best-endowed literary prizes in the world.

Last december, the Arts and Literature Department of the Bpi had chosen the novel L’Art de perdre (2017, Flammarion) by the French author Alice Zeniter. A book that had particularly touched our librarians: the story of Naïma, in search of truth about the story of her grandfather, a harki who fled Algeria after the war. A novel published in 2017 and translated in 2021 by Frank Wynne (The Art of Losing)

All the titles selected by the libraries – accompanied by a presentation text and a video – were announced on the Dublin Literary Award website last February: 79 titles were selected for 94 participating libraries.

Two months later, only 6 titles were selected for the final phase, including Alice Zeniter’s novel chosen by the Bpi!

It was precisely the Bpi’s choice that was crowned: on May 23, Alice Zeniter and her translator Frank Wynne won the Dublin Literary Award for L’Art de perdre, and the Bpi is proud for having proposed and defended Alice Zeniter’s novel until victory.

Congratulations to this great author, whose works you can find on the 3rd floor of the library !