The Prix de Mai was a short-lived French literary award, founded by Alain Robbe-Grillet and first awarded to Moderato Cantabile by Marguerite Duras in 1958.
Alain Robbe-Grillet was a French writer and filmmaker. He was one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend of the 1960s, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on 25 March 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat No. 32. He was married to Catherine Robbe-Grillet.
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.
Marguerite Donnadieu, known as Marguerite Duras, was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film Hiroshima mon amour (1959) earned her a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards.
The jury included Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Roland Barthes, Marthe Robert, Dominique Aury.
Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille was a French intellectual and literary figure working in literature, philosophy, anthropology, economics, sociology and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, and poetry, explored such subjects as erotism, mysticism, surrealism, and transgression. His work would prove influential on subsequent schools of philosophy and social theory, including poststructuralism.
Maurice Blanchot was a French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist. His work had a strong influence on post-structuralist philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida.
Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of many schools of theory, including structuralism, semiotics, social theory, design theory, anthropology, and post-structuralism.
Subsequent prizes went to such works as Le traître, (The traitor) by André Gorz, La Gana by Fred Deux (under pseudonym Jean Douassot), and Je by Yves Velan (1960), which did not meet with popular success, and the prize disappeared in short order.
André Gorz, more commonly known by his pen names Gérard Horst and Michel Bosquet, was an Austrian social philosopher and journalist.
Yves Velan, was a Swiss writer from Bassins.
