Nathacha Appanah, Robert Jones Junior and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr were revealed to on the first selection for Prix Fémina 2021 on September 8, 2021.
The Prix Femina is a French literary prize created by 22 writers for the magazine La Vie heureuse (today known as Femina) in 1904. It is decided each year by an exclusively female jury. They reward French-language works written in prose or verse, by both women and men. The winner is announced on the first Wednesday of November each year. Some of the previous winners of the award have been Léonora Miano, Marie Ndiaye among others. Abubakar Adam Ibrahim and Meryem Alaoui made the longlist in 2018.
The Femina jury for 2021 is chaired by Josyane Savigneau alongside Nathalie Azoulai, Evelyne Bloch-Dano, Claire Gallois, Anne-Marie Garat, Paula Jacques, Christine Jordis, Diane de Margerie, Scholastique Mukasonga, Mona Ozouf, Patricia Reznikov, and Danièle Sallenave.
The first selections for the awards were announced in the two broad categories of French, those published in France, and Foreign which are books published in other jurisdictions and translated into French. The writers of African descent who made the cut are;
French
- Rien ne t’appartient, by Nathacha Appanah (Gallimard)
- La plus secrète mémoire des hommes, by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (Philippe Rey)
Translated into French
- Les Prophètes, by Robert Jones Junior, translated by par David Fauquemberg (Grasset)
The next selections will take place on September 29 and October 13 before the winners are announced on October 25 at the Carnavalet Museum, Paris, France.
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