With a carefully adjusted cap on his unkempt hair, wearing a green sweater the same colour as his eyes, with the shirttails protruding from his jeans, a nonchalant gait, a backpack slung over his shoulder and the sports paper l’Equipe under his arm, Laurent Sagalovitsch projects the image of a 30-year-old dreamer, a bit of a relic from another age, but voracious for news. “I read the newspapers every day – every article, except those on the economy.” After literature studies at the Sorbonne and six years as a literary critic for Libération and Les Inrockuptibles, he nevertheless found the time to write Dade City, published by Actes Sud in 1996. Beware of appearances, however: behind this laid-back – and apparently guilt-free – individual there is a complex personality with a head full of a thousand and one questions. As he speaks, hints of his Jewish heritage emerge as an integral part of his identity. First of all, there is Dade City, an imaginary small town where the population, marked by a curse from the Jewish people, is confronted with its guilt and the falsification of its history. Then, there is La Canne de Virginia, the project selected by the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation, which evokes the final hours preceding the suicide of Virginia Woolf in 1941. “It was then that civilization began to sink into the darkness from which it is still trying to emerge. That was the end of a certain idea of humanity. Before I can write about my own age, I must settle the score. Talking about Virginia Woolf, and her long walk in the English countryside while German planes were flying around in the sky, and the reactions of her Jewish husband Leonard Woolf, was an indirect way of talking about my own Jewishness.” La Canne de Virginia was published by Actes Sud in 1998, which was also the year of the World Cup (as if we French could ever forget!). Knowing Laurent Sagalovitsch’s passion for soccer, L’Evénement du Jeudi asked him to write its soccer column during the competition. Once the exhilaration of the French victory had passed, he moved to Vancouver, Canada, following in the footsteps of Malcolm Lowry, author of Under the Volcano. From the distant west coast of Canada, Laurent Sagalovitsch published a short story in 1999 in the Journal du Dimanche, Vancouver Nulle Part (Vancouver Nowhere).

Achievements since winning the grant

- In 2005, Loin de Quoi? was published by Actes Sud.
- In April 2007, Laurent Sagalovitsch contributed to the special issue of l’Equipe Magazine devoted to Eric Cantona.