Going from obscurity to light, through a literary prize, requires a bit of acclimatization. This is what Bernard Bourrit, winner of the Wepler-Fondation La Poste Prize on November 10, is experiencing, with Destroy everything: a true novel, in that it is based on a real news item, a feminicide, but above all an exploratory story whose structure and language allow us to listen to the voices and the spirit of an era, the end of the 1960s, in Switzerland. A time, “from which the present comes”, where we found mitigating circumstances for the author of the fatal gesture. An immersive story, finally, led by a narrator who is both obsessive and full of doubts, whose sentences sometimes remain in suspense.
Among the Parisian literary prizes, the Wepler Prize is the most rebellious, the most curious about new talents, and the most independent too. Founded in 1998 by the Abbesses bookstore, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, directed by Marie-Rose Guarnieri, it is distinguished by a rotating jury, that is to say entirely renewed each year, including booksellers, journalists and readers.
