Gaspard Koenig wins the Interallié prize

Since its publication at the end of August Humus (the Observatory) has enjoyed an enthusiastic reception, and it appeared in the selection of most of the major prizes. Beautiful situation but which can turn out to be perilous. We shuddered for him, usually Parisian jurors are wary of the gifted type, born on the sunny side of the street. They prefer actresses, convicts devoting themselves to novels, or victims of contemporary tragedies putting their irrefutable pain on paper. So the first in class...

Here is Gaspard Koenig winner of the Interallié prize. It is awarded by a jury which does not care about fashions and editorial logic, focusing instead on the brilliance of an author - last year Philibert Humm and his irresistible Roman river. And what a price! Koenig takes his place in a list that includes Malraux, Schoendoerffer, Bodard, Japrisot. And even the new president of the Areopagus: Jean-Marie Rouart, who succeeded the late Philippe Tesson, was laureate in 1977.

Humus immediately seduces with its contemporary tone. Our author has taken up a great cause: the future of the planet. Their names are Kevin and Arthur, two friends who graduated from a great school and launched an attack on life. They turn their backs on the careers that the giants of industry or technology offer them to realize their dream: this involves the preservation, or better: the regeneration of the Earth. This is the fight of their generation. One creates a startup that manufactures and markets vermicomposting bins. The other takes over his grandfather’s farm to implement the “simplified farming technique”. Understand: no-till.

Throughout the novel, Kevin and Arthur, the former professional and the son of a lawyer, although passionate, will each come up against the wall of reality: cynicism of some, selfishness of others, harshness of nature. “Where there is man, there is manhood,” says Saint Francis de Sales, an author who is not cited in this great novel which contains references to Thoreau, Baudelaire or Ivan Illich. Life passes quickly and slips through their fingers.

It is to the tradition of the Balzacian novel that Humus is incontestably linked, as we observe the care that the author took in the composition of his book. He reconstitutes a society. The world according to Koenig is made up of multiple places, true details, contemporary jargon: an era and an environment. First of all, it is the AgroParisTech campus where the two heroes study. The author describes it as follows: “The devil’s pond for the walker of the Anthropocene.” It is then a village in Normandy with its farmers, its followers of the alter-economy, its participatory “third places” – and between these various biotopes some tasty frictions. Léa, the village naturopath, provides gong baths - also known as “holistic cleansing”. Conversely, Mr. Jobard, Arthur's neighbor, a farmer like dad, does not share his futuristic ideas and takes him to court for having replanted a hedge.

Reading with delight this novel of lost illusions, we think of what Houellebecq - Prix Interallié 2005 - could have made of this subject. The irony which runs through Humus is reminiscent in many ways of the Possibility of an Island. It is also not without kinship with Le Voyant d’Etampes, by the promising Abel Quentin. She visibly won over the Lasserre jury.

In the literary Figaro (September 6, 2023) the writer Benoît Duteurtre found many attractions in this novel which he already compared to the Human Comedy. To publish, some twenty years ago, Gaspard Koenig created a pseudonym, made up of a first name, that of a poor kid sung by Verlaine, and a name that he borrowed from his mother. In German Koenig means king, which clearly shows the ambition that drives this gifted young writer. He has quite simply decided to reign over minds and hearts, and his Rastignacian cry continues to spread throughout the court and the city: “It’s our two Paris!”