'L’horloger,' the debut novel by Belgian author Jérémie Claes, won the Evêché Prize for crime fiction on Tuesday evening in Marseille, France.
Claes, who has worked as a wine merchant near Brussels for around 20 years after a long career as a playwright, takes his protagonist from the United States to the small village of Gourdon in Alpes-Maritimes, France, where he spent his childhood summers with his grandmother.
The story follows Jacob Dreyfus, a New York academic forced to flee his country and seek refuge in France under a new identity after helping to dismantle a white supremacist militia. The reader is taken on a journey from Louisiana to Brussels, to Patagonia and to Paris, against the backdrop of an America in turmoil during President Trump’s first term.
Now a part-time wine merchant, having published a second novel and currently writing a third, Claes has shifted focus slightly away from wine.
“After writing for theatre, the ultimate goal was novels,” he told French news agency AFP. “It took time to mature. At some point, I set aside my job to write ‘L’horloger’, and I haven’t stopped since. Now, it’s taking me on a journey to talk about it, and I love it.”
The Evêché Prize – Polars du Sud, now in its eighth edition, is named after the legendary police headquarters in Marseille.
It has been awarded since 2018 by a jury whose members include Marseille police officers (50%) and which is presided over by Eric Arella, former chief of Marseille’s judicial police, who now heads Monaco’s police.
Jérémie Claes is the second foreign author to receive this award, after Swiss writer Nicolas Feuz, for ‘Heresix,’ in 2022.
