A new literary prize for the Age of Tweets

Inspired by a line from Woody Allen film Hannah and Her Sisters – “Don’t forget the poem on page 112. It reminded me of you!” – the French literary award asks its jury, at first, to read only page 112 of each novel. 

“For several decades, editors and writers have given an exceptional care to the beginning of a book, in order to impress the reader immediately,” the prize explains. “But what happens in the rest of the book? Alas … too often, nothing at all.” 

So they came up with a theory: page 112 is the point at which they believe the attention of an author and a publisher is most likely to have lapsed. 

“Everyone neglects page 112,” they write. “That’s why we chose it. Our logic is simple. If a remarkable page 112 is rare, then it is allowed to hope that the novel in which it appears might also be remarkable, from beginning to end.” If a novel has a beautiful 112, the jury will read the rest of the book.