Novel On Hitler's Rise Wins France's Top Book Award

Two novels about the Nazis took France's biggest literary prizes on Monday, with Eric Vuillard's story of how German industry and finance backed Adolf Hitler winning the top Prix Goncourt

Paris, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 06th Nov, 2017 ) :Two novels about the Nazis took France's biggest literary prizes on Monday, with Eric Vuillard's story of how German industry and finance backed Adolf Hitler winning the top Prix Goncourt.

"L'ordre du jour" (in English "Agenda") had been among the favourites for the Goncourt prize -- the most prestigious in the French-speaking world. Vuillard, 49, said he was taken aback on hearing he won for his elegant, 160-page book which charts how the financial support of German industrialists was crucial to Hitler's rise.

"One is always surprised, sometimes fatally," he told reporters at the Paris restaurant where the winner was announced. Asked whether the book was a warning for our own populist times, the writer said he wanted to set out how the "elites and industrialists slid into a situation where they compromised themselves".

The Renaudot award, which is often seen as a consolation prize for those not shortlisted for the Goncourt, went to "The Disappearance of Josef Mengele" about the secret post-Holocaust life of the Nazi war criminal.

Journalist Olivier Guez tells how the SS doctor, notorious as the "Angel of Death" at the Auschwitz concentration camp for his often lethal experiments on prisoners, managed to evade arrest and even get a West German passport in his own name in the 1950s while living in Argentina.

While Vuillard gets only 10 Euros ($11) in prize money, the Goncourt almost guarantees a boost in sales of 450,000 copies or more, placing it instantly among the year's top bestsellers. Although his book was greatly admired, many critics had tipped Veronique Olmi to make history by becoming the second women writer in a row to win the century-old prize.