Jean-Claude Mourlevat – laureate 2021 1
Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award ‘Do you know why I
like you?’ ‘No; but do tell. I’d like to hear it.’ ‘I like you because, among other things, you always stay a foot behind me when we go out walking. You might say that’s nothing, but when I’m walking with anyone else, I’m always the one who’s a foot behind. And it feels like they’re having to wait for me, and that irritates me.’ Free translation from Le chagrin du roi mort (The Dead King’s Sorrow’, Gallimard Jeunesse, 2009) 18