The 2009 “European Book Prize” deserves further comment, following on from the article in issue 10038. I admit that I was rather sceptical in the beginning about the idea of splitting the prize in two and having one prize for a novel and another for an essay because this would be in direct competition in the French-speaking world with the Goncourt Prize and hundreds of similar book prizes elsewhere in Europe. I admit that I was wrong because the prize-winning novel for 2009 is not a...