Abdourahman Waberi

The divine song

Zulma-Selection for the City of Deauville's Books & Music Prize

The Divine Song is a novel, a love story that takes up an exemplary life, that of an Afro-American singer, composer and poet born in Chicago in 1949, whose immense genius and harsh destiny no one can ignore: Gil Scott-Heron, reinvented here under the name of Sammy the Enchanter.

Winner of the Louis Guilloux Prize 2015

Fabrice Loi

Pirates

Gallimard-Selection for the City of Deauville's Books & Music Prize

Tony Palacio, a showman and jazz trumpeter, leaves the family lottery and goes up to Marseille. Between survival and petty trafficking, he meets Max Opale, a former military man turned ballistics expert. By turns friend, mentor and rival, Max Opale introduces Tony to violence in an investigation linked to the Somali pirates. A novel about our ideals, and about the links between music, poetry and politics.

Pierre Grillet

Ms. Dream

Edition Stock-Selection Books & Music Prize of the City of Deauville

At the origin of the most mythical song of Alain Bashung, there is a man. And an impossible love. Pierre Grillet tells the story of this woman who inspired him to write lyrics that we know by heart in spite of ourselves: they loved each other, they fled, they betrayed each other, they were reconciled. They played with their lives. Natasha haunted New York, luxury hotels and psychiatric hospitals. The lovers were lost but the love remained; this is what we discover, page after page, in this bewitching book.

Olivier Baumont

To the opera, Sir!

Gallimard-Selection for the City of Deauville's Books & Music Prize

Saint-Simon knew how to listen to his time, and if he perhaps only heard its music, he was nevertheless careful to memorize everything. The musical echoes that reach us today are magnified by his literary genius; they never cease to be exciting, surprising, and rich in new perceptions of both the period and the author himself.