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Jurica Pavičić is this year’s winner of the Prix Le Point du Polar européen 2021 for his crime novel “The Red Water”. This French literary prize established in 2003 by the weekly magazine Le Point is awarded each year for the best crime or thriller novel by a European author in French or a French translation. Jury includes renowned French authors and journalists: Jean-Louis Debré, Hannelore Cayre, Jacques Dupont, Irène Frain, René Fregni, Julie Malaure, Christophe Ono-dit-Biot, and François Pirola.

Pavičić will receive the award at Quais du Polar Festival in Lyon, on Friday, July 2nd, 2021. 

“The Red Water” was translated by Olivier Lannuzel and published as “L'Eau rouge” by Agullo éditions earlier this year with amazing press from French media, including riveting reviews in Le Mond and Liberation. A Croatian bestseller, originally published in 2017 by Profil, it received the Ksaver Šandor Gjalski and Fric Award and was among the finalist of Tportal and Meša Selimović Award for the best novel of the year. 

Both a crime novel and a family saga, “The Red Water” chronicles a search for a seventeen-year-old girl that lasted for almost three decades. The police search yields no results, and the surrounding political events, the collapse of a state, social change, and war, overshadow her disappearance which falls into oblivion. The only ones still looking for her are her closest family: father, mother, and twin brother. Pavičić masterfully intertwined a tragic family story, the obsessive and persistent need to find answers, with a dramatic political shift, in an intricate portrayal of a society caught in a fundamental and painful transition.