Nominations invited for the prestigious Michel Déon Prize
The 2024 Michel Déon Prize for non-fiction is now open. Nominations are invited for the best non-fiction book published in the last two years by a writer living in Ireland. The eligible categories are autobiography, biography, cultural studies, history, literary studies, philosophy, and travel.
The €10,000 prize will be awarded in September 2024 with the winning author giving The Michel Déon Lecture in France in 2025.
The inaugural prize in 2018 was presented to historian Breandán MacSuibhne for his book The End of Outrage: Post-Famine Adjustment in Rural Ireland. In 2020 journalist Conor O’Clery won the award with The Shoemaker and his Daughter, and the most recent winner in 2022 was journalist Sally Hayden for her book My Fourth Time, We Drowned.
Michel Déon (1919 –2016) is considered to have been one of the leading French writers of the 20th century, who made Ireland his home in the 1970s until his death in 2016. He published over fifty works of fiction and non-fiction and was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Prix Interallié for his 1970 novel, Les Poneys sauvages (The Wild Ponies). Déon’s 1973 novel Un taxi mauve (A Purple Taxi) received the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française and in 1978 he was elected to the Académie française.
To nominate a title online, please see here, and find the full terms and conditions here. The closing date for nominations is midnight on 8 April 2024.
