The French writer Sébastien Lapaque has been awarded the Grand Prize for Fiction given by the French Academy, valued at ten thousand euros, for his novel “The Birds' Song,” according to the French newspaper “Le Monde,” which was followed by the Video News Agency.
Lapaque won the competition in the third round of voting, receiving eight votes, one vote ahead of the writer Yannick Enel, while Marie Boutiqueno received three votes.
The novel, released in early October by Actes Sud, tells the story of a boy named Noah, who lived in the Brittany region of France during the 1970s, before being driven by the loss of his great love to embark on a spiritual journey in the footsteps of Saint Francis of Assisi, inspired by the voices of birds in his search for a new meaning of life.
With this victory, Lapaque's novel surpassed Enel's “The Endless Isolation of Teachers” and Boutiqueno's “The Wild Bear,” winning one of the most prestigious literary awards granted by the French Academy.
The novel is a poetic work that follows in the footsteps of Francis of Assisi, resembling a poem in praise of one of the most famous and holiest figures in Christian history and the founder of the Franciscan order, who lived in the middle ages and left a profound impact on Western theology and philosophy.
This moving story, written by the novelist and Catholic essayist, takes place in 1977; where seven-year-old Noah finds himself lost between parents engrossed in their work, noisy cousins, and grandparents to whom he owes much. In the family home in Fougères, on the fringes of legendary Brittany, and in close contact with nature, he often dreams of flying like a bird; without wings or feathers, it suffices for him to move his arms to rise off the ground, soar above the trees and houses, and ascend into the sky.
Sébastien Lapaque was born in 1971 in the German city of Tübingen; he is a novelist and essayist, studied history and philosophy at the Sorbonne University. In 1998, he published his first non-fiction book titled "Georges Bernanos, Once Again," and then published his first novel “The Mysterious Barriers” in the same year, both of which revealed his inclination towards theology, walking journeys, and noir novels.
Lapaque then worked for the weekly magazine “Marianne,” and later joined the literary section of “Le Figaro” in the late 1990s, publishing his second novel “Happy Thoughts” in 1999, in addition to his literary anthologies “The Triumph of Dionysus” (1999) and “A Traveler in My Dream” (2002).
Lapaque won the Prix Goncourt for short stories in 2002 for his collection “French Mythology,” while his travels to Brazil formed the basis for his book "Under the Sun of Exile" (2003), paving the way for his literary anthology “The Taste of Rio de Janeiro” (2004).
In 2005 he wrote travel literature about the Amazon titled “A Short Moderate Journey,” followed by “Room Service” and “Intestine and Letters” in 2007, and in May 2008 he published his non-fiction book “He Must Leave” critiquing Sarkozism.
Lapaque's record includes several awards; alongside the prestigious Prix Goncourt, he received the François Mauriac Prize for “Happy Thoughts” in 1999 and the Jean Frostier Prize for “This World Is So Beautiful” in 2021.
It is noted that the Grand Prize for Fiction from the French Academy was awarded in 2025 to the writer Yannick Lahanes for her novel “Night Travelers.”