Nominate the best non-fiction title since 2020 for the €10,000 Michel Déon prize.
The Royal Irish Academy has opened nominations for the 2022 Michel Déon Prize for non-fiction, The €10,000 prize will be awarded in September 2022 for the best non-fiction book, published since 1 April 2020 by a writer living in Ireland. The winning author will also give the ‘Michel Déon Lecture’ in France in 2023.
In September 2020 the Royal Irish Academy awarded the prize to Conor O’Clery for his book ‘The Shoemaker and his Daughter’. In 2018 the inaugural prize went to historian Breandán MacSuibhne for his book ‘The End of Outrage: Post-Famine Adjustment in Rural Ireland’.
The Michel Déon Prize, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs, will be awarded to the author of the book that the judging panel consider to be the best work of non-fiction in the eligible categories of autobiography, biography, cultural studies, history, literary studies, philosophy and travel.
Michel Déon (1919 –2016) is considered to have been one of the leading French writers of the 20th century and lived in Ireland from the 1970s until his death in 2016. He published over 50 works of fiction and nonfiction 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 received the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française and in 1978 he was elected to the Académie française.
To nominate a title for consideration visit www.ria.ie/michel-deon-prize
The closing date for nominations is midnight on 12 April 2022