{{More citations needed, date=October 2021
The Prix de Mai was a short-lived French literary award, founded by
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet (; 18 August 1922 – 18 February 2008) was a French writer and filmmaker. He was one of the figures most associated with the '' Nouveau Roman'' (new novel) trend of the 1960s, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and C ...
and first awarded to ''
Moderato Cantabile
''Moderato Cantabile'' is a novel by Marguerite Duras. It was very popular, selling half a million copies, and was the initial source of Duras' fame.
Plot
The plot is initially the banal daily routine of a rich woman taking her son to piano lesso ...
'' by
Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu (, 4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), known as Marguerite Duras (), was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film ''Hiroshima mon amour'' (1959) ea ...
in 1958.
The jury included
Georges Bataille
Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, ...
,
Maurice Blanchot
Maurice Blanchot (; ; 22 September 1907 – 20 February 2003) was a French writer, philosopher and literary theorist. His work, exploring a philosophy of death alongside poetic theories of meaning and sense, bore significant influence on post- ...
,
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular ...
,
Marthe Robert
Marthe Robert (March 25, 1914 – April 12, 1996) was a French essayist and translator.
Robert was born in Paris on March 25, 1914. In 1941, she met psychoanalyst Michel de M'Uzan, whom she later married. In 1995, she received the Grand Prix Natio ...
,
Dominique Aury
Anne Cécile Desclos (23 September 1907 – 27 April 1998) was a French journalist and novelist who wrote under the pen names Dominique Aury and Pauline Réage. She is best known for her erotic novel ''Story of O'' (1954).
Early life
Born in ...
.
Subsequent prizes went to such works as '' Le traître,'' (The traitor) by
André Gorz
André Gorz (né Gerhart Hirsch ; 9 February 1923 – 22 September 2007), more commonly known by his pen names Gérard Horst and Michel Bosquet , was an Austrian and French social philosopher and journalist and critic of work. He co-founded ...
Yves Velan
Yves Velan, (29 August 1925 in Saint-Quentin, Aisne – 6 May 2017) was a Swiss writer from Bassins.
Biography
He studied literature at Lausanne, where he joined the Society of Belles Lettres, and worked two years as a reader at the University ...
(1960), which did not meet with popular success, and the prize disappeared in short order.