Clara Dupont-Monod

Clara Dupont-Monod is a French novelist and journalist born in 1973 in Paris. She is a respected literary journalist who has presented programs on Radio France and contributed widely to French cultural media. Her fiction is known for its spare, powerful prose and its engagement with myth, history, and medieval France. Dupont-Monod has published several novels including Le roi disait que j'étais diable (2004), about Eleanor of Aquitaine, and La Passion selon Juette (2007). Her earlier work established her interest in historical women who broke free from the constraints of their time. S'adapter (Adapting), her 2021 Prix Femina (and Prix Renaudot) winner, is a short, lyrical novel about a family into which a severely disabled child is born. The novel is narrated from the perspectives of three siblings — the eldest, the youngest, and the middle child — exploring how each adapts (or fails to) to the presence of the disabled child. The result is a meditation on love, difference, and what it means to care for someone who cannot communicate. S'adapter was a sensation in France, winning multiple prizes and being praised for its formal economy and emotional power. Dupont-Monod is regarded as one of the most gifted stylists of her generation.