PRESS RELEASE
June 20,2023
The French National Academy of Medicine announces:
Stéphanie Dupays, winner
of the Literary Award of the National Academy of Medicine with
« Un puma dans le cœur » («A puma in the heart»)
The French National Academy of Medicine unveils the winner of the 2nd edition of its Literary Award which rewards for their literary quality works mainly dedicated to health disciplines and professions, illness or health of the body or soul.
Works can be novels, stories or non-fiction texts. The prize rewards a book in French by a living author, published no earlier than the year preceding the year of the competition. The award is not endowed and confers to the winner the qualification of Laureate of the National Academy of Medicine.
After jury deliberation, the Literary Price of the National Academy of Medicine was awarded to Stéphanie Dupays, for her book “Un puma dans le cœur”, published by “Editions de l’Olivier”.
The art work-
“Died of grief, heartbroken”.
This is the family legend surrounding the narrator’s great-grandmother; Anne Décimus would have followed her husband in death. The strange closeness that Stéphanie Dupays feels with her ancestor pushed her to investigate. She discovers then a secret that shakes her certainties: Anne spent most of her life in an asylum; she died forty years after the date everyone thought official. How could this woman’s existence be erased to such an extent that even her own family knows nothing about her?
“Un puma dans le cœur” tells the story of an intimate journey towards understanding and reclaiming one’s heritage. By probing the ties and misunderstandings that unite or separate members of the same family, this deeply moving novel questions our original flaws.
Mixing fiction and personal narrative, Stéphanie Dupays gives a voice to an extraordinary woman who didn’t know how to cope with the world and was silenced. She proves that literature can pacify ghosts.
PRESS CONTACT: Virginie Gustin +33 (0)6 62 52 43 42 virginie.gustin@academie-medecine.fr
ACADÉMIE NATIONALE DE MÉDECINE, 16 rue Bonaparte – 75272 Paris cedex 06
