Prix du Livre du Réel 2019 for Chris De Stoop

The third edition of the Prix du Livre du Réel was awarded on Tuesday 28 May 2019. The prize in the ‘French language’ category went to François Beaune for ‘Omar et Greg’, published by Le Nouvel Attila. In the category ‘foreign language books translated into French’ Chris De Stoop won for ‘Ceci est ma ferme’ ('This Is My Farm'), published by Christian Bourgois Editeurs and translated from the Dutch by Micheline Goche. The two books came out in September 2018. This Is My Farm is a captivating and distressing account of the disappearance of the farmer in the Belgian lowlands and the way farmland is replaced by new nature reserves.

The two winners were chosen by a jury chaired by Yves Harté, editor-in-chief of newspaper ‘Sud Ouest’, and made up of six authors/journalists, including Florence Aubenas and Philippe Lançon, and two booksellers from bookshop Mollat.

The award, worth 6,000 euro, was launched in 2017 by bookshop Mollat in conjunction with ‘Sud Ouest’ to honour and raise the profile of a genre that plays with the boundaries of literature and journalism and still receives too little recognition in France.

The award ceremony takes place on 11 June 2019 in Maison de la Poésie, Paris.