Literature: What is the Cino-Del-Duca Prize, awarded this year to Boualem Sansal?
A small light in a very dreary daily life. Imprisoned in Algeria since mid-November 2024, notably for attacks on territorial integrity, the writer Boualem Sansal received the Cino-Del-Duca World Prize for his entire body of work this Wednesday, May 21. The jury thus wished to pay tribute " to the strength of a writer who, beyond borders and censorship, continues to make a free, deeply humanist, and resolutely necessary voice heard."
Although little known to the general public, the Cino Del Duca Prize is among the most generous in the world in its field, with a prize of €200,000. This amount places it just behind the Nobel Prize for Literature (nearly €900,000) and the Astrid Lindgren Prize, for children's authors (over €500,000).
This French literary award is named after publisher Cino Del Duca. Born in 1899 to a poor family in central Italy, he made his fortune by importing to France a concept that had been very successful in his home country: the "press of the heart." These titles, aimed at a female audience, left a large place for romantic fiction. From Nous deux in 1947 to Télé poche in 1966, Cino Del Duca launched more than ten magazines in total.
In the 1950s, his activities diversified. The entrepreneur opened publishing houses and bookstores, built four printing presses and produced films, such as Pier Paolo Pasolini 's Accattone , released in 1961. The press boss also began to develop patronage activities, with the creation of the Del Duca scholarship, a prize of one million francs allowing a writer to become financially independent.
Upon his death in 1967, his wife Simone Del Duca decided to continue his work. The Cino-Del-Duca Prize was created two years later, in order to "crown the career of a French or foreign author whose work constitutes, in scientific or literary form, a message of modern humanism." From 1975, the newly created Simone-et-Cino-Del-Duca Foundation awarded this prize.
In its more than fifty years of existence, the Cino-Del-Duca Prize has recognized numerous French and foreign authors, some of whom have gone on to receive Nobel Prizes. Among the honorees are Jean Anouilh, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Patrick Modiano, and Maryse Condé .
Thanks to its great interdisciplinarity, scientists, historians and doctors are also among the winners, for example the astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan , awarded in 2012, and the Egyptologist Jean Leclant (2000). Since Simone Del Duca's death in 2004, her foundation has been taken over by the Institut de France, which is now responsible for awarding the prize.
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