Marion Brunet receives the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award 2025
The 2025 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award goes to the French author Marion Brunet. In her novels, written in a shimmering and crystal-clear prose, Brunet spotlights burning social issues and draws insightful portraits of vulnerable groups and young people in revolt. The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award amounts to 5 million SEK (approx. 450 000 EUR, 495 000 USD) making it the largest international children’s and young adult literature award in the world. The award ceremony will take place on June 9, 2025, at the Concert Hall in Stockholm.
”Marion Brunet is a brilliant describer of young peoples’ lives in an increasingly materialistic and threatening world. Present and future intertwine in her luminous stories, where the boundaries of friendship and love are constantly tested. Her work cuts to the heart of our time,” says Boel Westin, chair of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award jury.
The jury’s motivation:
“Marion Brunet’s books take place in a fiercely pulsating present with climate crisis and social vulnerability as recurring themes. In shimmering and crystal-clear prose, young people are portrayed in revolt against a corrupt society. The dark and violent parts of our world are explored in Brunet’s timely narratives, which are made timeless by their links to myth and folklore. And counterforces are found in friendship, solidarity, and the beauty of nature.”
About Marion Brunet
Marion Brunet was born in 1976 and resides in Marseille. Her first novel, Frangine (Sister), was published in 2013. It tells the story of two siblings, a brother and a sister, growing up with two mothers who became parents with the help of IVF. Frangine shines a spotlight on a homophobia that primarily impacts the daughter in the family. Brunet has since published some fifteen books, most for young adults but including some adult novels and books for younger readers. Her most recent books are the second part of the trilogy Ilos and the novel Nos armes, both published in 2024.
Brunet’s books take up themes of social vulnerability, violence, and the kind of anxiety about the future that affects young people most of all. She spotlights burning social issues and draws insightful portraits of vulnerable groups and young people in revolt against the regular patterns of life in an increasingly materialistic and threatening social climate.
Plein gris (Solid grey), a young adult novel which has drawn particular interest in France, is a nigh on claustrophobic story about a handful of young people on a sailing tour from Brittany to Ireland. Water, the sea, and the raging elements are important foundations of this novel, whose very first sentences drop the reader into the middle of disaster. The sailing trip, long envisioned and planned in minute detail, turns into a nightmare. The group’s charismatic leader is found dead, and the urgent question of what really happened to him, in combination with a looming storm, motors the plot.
Marion Brunet moves freely among various genres, from dystopia to thriller-tinged tales to stories with elements of fantasy and adventure, all executed in characteristically stylish prose and a crystalline, sometimes biting realism where the smallest detail carries significance.
Works by Marion Brunet have been translated to English, Spanish, Catalan and Russian.
Further information
An in-depth introduction to Marion Brunet, written by the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award jury, is at alma.se/en
André Vifot Haas
andre.vifot.haas@alma.se
+46 (0)76-540 10 33
Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award
Kulturrådet, Box 27215, 102 53 Stockholm
The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award was created in 2002 by the Swedish government to promote every child’s right to great stories. This global award is given annually to a person or organisation for their outstanding contribution to children’s and young adult literature. With a prize of five million Swedish kronor, it is the largest award of its kind. Administrated by the Swedish Arts Council.
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