Home > News & Press

THAD CARHART WINS

2018 French Heritage
Literary Award

Thad Carhart’s memoir Finding Fontainebleau: An American Boy in France, has been selected as the winner of the French Heritage Society’s annual Literary Award for 2018. Announced in May of 2018, the prize is the pre-eminent award for a work in English whose subject illuminates for the general public an important element of French cultural history. Recognizing the deep and lasting influence of France’s culture on American history and thought is central to the award’s purpose.

The prize is awarded annually by the New York-based French Heritage Society, which counts 11 chapters in the U.S. and France.

Prize_ThadCarhart

Silver Award Cup

 

This year’s jury was composed of Laura Auricchio, Professor of Art History at Parsons School of Design; Anne Poulet, Director Emerita of The Frick Collection; and Elaine Sciolino, contributing writer and former Paris Bureau Chief for the New York Times.

As this year’s honoree, Carhart received a cash prize as well as a replica of a silver goblet designed by Thomas Jefferson while he served as Minister to France. An awards ceremony and dinner, chaired by Elizabeth Stribling and Christian Draz, were held in May of 2018 at a private club in New York.

anniewatt_69469-Thad Carhart

Signing session at New York event

ON THE
PRESS

Here are some press reviews about
Finding Fontainebleau

Click on the quotes
below to read the
entire review or article

Read my article about the Château of Fontainebleau in The New York Times, online now.
The illustrated hardcopy piece appeared in the Sunday edition of The New York Times on October 2.

“Mr. Carhart also resurrects the mood and mores of a particular window in time: the 1950s of Ike and Elvis’s America, and postwar France… Like the castle, his memoir imaginatively and smoothly integrates multiple influences, styles, and whims.”
—The New York Times

“The book is a lovely snapshot of daily life in a bygone France, as well as a tribute to the artistic and architectural glories of this centuries-old royal palace, a predecessor to Versailles.”
—Newsday

“Mr. Carhart is a vivid writer, who can plunge the reader right into his experiences… Few writers are more sensitive or susceptible to the beauties of Paris and the French countryside, but it is one of the chief strengths of this warts-and-all portrait that the atmosphere of France and the distinctive characteristics of its people are evoked in their entirety.”
—The Washington Times

“A vivid picture of the rhythms and flavor of post-war France.”
—Northampton Daily Hampshire Gazette

“Carhart turns his observant eye on small, sometimes odd-seeming details—the once-ubiquitous Turkish toilets in cafes, the uniquely French method of taking household inventory, French cars of the 1950s. These lovely digressions, along with Carhart’s own family’s story, illuminate French culture in an appealing way.”
—BookPage

“American casualness and exuberance meet French formality and grandeur in this lively, perceptive memoir.”
—Publishers Weekly

“The author of The Piano Shop on the Left Bank (2001) returns with another celebration of France…Those lucky enough to have lived and attended school in Europe will love this book, and anyone heading to Paris will surely add Fontainebleau to his or her schedule.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Part memoir, part history, part love letter to France—Thad Carhart’s adopted home—Finding Fontainebleau is a fun, intriguing meditation on time, place, and nationality. I don’t think I can pay it a greater compliment than to report that reading it sent me to Paris’s Gare de Lyon, there to board a train to Fontainebleau, which I saw with new eyes.”
—Penelope Rowlands, author of Paris Was Ours

“Charming and vivid and sweet, Finding Fontainebleau is full of the hopeful ambiance of Americans discovering France in the post-war era.”
—Alice Kaplan, author of French Lessons and Dreaming in French