Sylvain Prudhomme

Sylvain Prudhomme is a French novelist born in 1979 in Grasse. He grew up partly in Africa — his father worked for a development organization in Cameroon and Namibia — and this experience of displacement and cross-cultural encounter is central to much of his fiction. He has also lived in Italy, experience that feeds into his body of work. Prudhomme is the author of several novels including Les Grands (2014) and Légende (2016). His fiction is known for its contemplative pace, its attention to friendship and masculine bonds, and its precise, clean prose. He is a writer of great subtlety, interested in the gap between what people say and what they mean. Par les routes (By the Roads / The Roads), his 2019 Prix Femina winner, is a novel about a writer who rediscovers a childhood friend who has become an obsessive hitchhiker, living perpetually on the road. The book is a meditation on freedom, commitment, and the choices that define a life, told with great warmth and understated emotion. Prudhomme is one of the most admired writers of his generation in France. Par les routes was praised for its elegance, its emotional depth, and the skill with which it transforms a simple premise into something profound.