Frédéric Boyer wins the Grand Prix du Mont Blanc with his "Mercantour intime"

Mont Blanc Grand Prix. It has just tumbled, like an avalanche of happiness, into the world of Frédéric Boyer for his Mercantour intime. The eight stories, published by Mémoires Millénaires, the publishing house created and directed by the Nice-based author, particularly moved the jury of the Passy International Mountain Book Fair. This is the annual event that has brought together, for thirty-five years near Chamonix, literary enthusiasts passionate about the peaks. Organized by the association Montagnes en pages, it brought together authors from around the world from August 8 to 10, expressing themselves through comics, books on mountaineering, for children... All related to altitude.

The clot, then the taxman

This award resonates like revenge for Frédéric Boyer, whose life almost fell into a definitive abyss in February 2024. While recharging his batteries in Roya, a hamlet dear to his mountain heart, he suffers a stroke. Quickly and efficiently treated, he is finally out of trouble, even if the convalescence will be a long trek towards resilience... And it's not over: a month later, while he is recovering as best he can, he learns that a tax audit is falling on his publishing house. A snowball effect on his physical and moral health. Here again, he doesn't come out too badly: he is only accused of an error in the preparation of invoices. But still, after the blood clot that blocked a cerebral artery, this kind of ordeal is a bit of a drag.

Don't forget

And yet... It was "thanks" to his stroke and his tax audit that Frédéric Boyer wrote this book "so as not to forget the long road to reconstruction after a trauma. Not to forget that, from now on, we must learn to keep our energy expenditure in check." He had slipped. Here he is again at the top of the slope. Thanks to stories featuring the Vésubie, the Tinée, the Val de Blore. Stories of a man from below who looks up there while "needing to look back."

The book was released in the spring, at the same time as one by another lover of the same mountain range: Pascal Colletta. The teacher, born in Ilonse, has written Nouvelles du Mercantour - nine stories to tell the mountain differently. The main character? Mercantour, again. The legendary Mercantour, with its wolves, peasants, and sorcerers... which sweeps the reader into an authentic whirlwind, far from the lights of the overrated coastline.

Unanimously

The Passy fair organizers selected the two books in the mountain stories category. "This is the first time that Mémoires Millénaires, which is celebrating its twentieth anniversary with a focus on promoting regional heritage between Nice and Marseille, has participated in the event. The publishing house was chosen, but it was a book that won the award."

And Frédéric Boyer's received the Grand Prix du Mont Blanc "unanimously by the jury, for the humanity, the truth, and the love of Mercantour that emanates from it."