Jean-Claude Mourlevat – laureate 2021 1
Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award Learn more about J
ean-Claude Mourlevat The following is an excerpt from our jury’s introduction to Jean-Claude Mourlevat’s work. You can read the full text at alma.se. An eminent epicist Mourlevat’s richly diverse work addresses itself not only to young children and teens but also to adults. He writes novels of social critique, but works mainly in the world of fairy tale, fable, fantasy, and science fiction, and he has also written autobiographical and documentary works. But above all, Jean-Claude Mourlevat is an epicist of the first rank. He creates imaginary worlds that are utterly his own, drawing on venerable literary traditions to create new stories full of surprises, unexpected turns, and unforeseen resolutions. He erases genre boundaries while always preserving a connection to a contemporary world that we see, through his eyes, in a fresh new light. Social realism Mourlevat’s characters are often abandoned, parentless and vulnerable. They must forge a future for themselves. L’Enfant océan (1999), is a book that garnered considerable acclaim and intro16 duced Mourlevat to a wider audience. In a series of episodes, we follow seven siblings as they flee from a threatening home environment. Yann, the youngest, is ten, but he is physically no larger than a two-year-old and he has almost no oral language. Yet he is gifted, loves to read, and has magic powers. And so it is he who leads the children on their difficult and dangerous way westward toward the sea; he who becomes a guardian angel for his older siblings. While the fairy tale theme gives Mourlevat’s narrative a timeless quality, an acid realism also anchors the narrative in modern-day France. From fairy tale to science fiction Often, he conjures up desolate winter landscapes of penetrating cold, mountains of snow, and biting winds, as in the dramatic narrative Le chagrin du roi mort (2009). Here, his images of winter have a Nordic feel, and the tale of the dead king’s sorrow has many points of overlap with Njál’s Saga, the most