French Prizes

I found out France has quite a busy time awarding literary prizes in November. These are the 2008 winners. For those of you who are interested:

Prix Renaudot (similar criteria to the Goncourt): Le roi de Kahel by Tierno Monénembo

Prix Goncourt (best and most imaginative prose of the year): Syngué Sabour. Pierre de Patience by Atiq Rahimi

Prix Médicis (authors whose fame does not yet match their talent): Là où les tigres sont chez eux by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès

Prix Femina (all woman jury): Où on va papa by Jean-Louis Fournier

Prix interallié (novel written by a journalist): Le premier principe, le second principe by Serge Bramly

Prix de l'Académie française: La dernière conférence by Marc Bressant

Some of these also have other categories (Essays, Poetry, Foreign Novel). This seems to be a good source: http://www.prix-litteraires.net/index.php

I don't know how many have been translated, but I'm sure it will be forthcoming! Bonne lecture!

The French-Senegalese author Marie NDiaye is the winner of this year's Prix Goncourt, for her novel Trois femmes puissantes (Three Powerful Women), which "weaves together the stories of three women: Norah, who arrives at her father's home in Africa; Fanta, teaching French in Dakar, who is forced to follow her partner back to a miserable life in France, and Khady Demba, a young, penniless African widow who is trying to join her distant cousin Fanta in France." She is the first black woman to win the Prix Goncourt, which is considered to be the top literary prize in France.

Today's Guardian has an article about today's announcement. I was amazed to learn that the Prix Goncourt is worth only €10. The winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize gets €100,000!

Black woman wins Prix Goncourt for the first time

The same article in #2 also announces the winner of this year's Prix Renaudot, Frédéric Beigbeder for his autobiographical novel Un roman français (A French Novel).

I read this announcement yesterday in the NY Times. I thought it was a typo that she got $15 as the prize. It's almost not even worth the trouble to cash the check.

Amazon UK is selling Trois femmes puissantes for £23.62, or €26.33. So, Ms NDiaye can't even purchase her own book with her reward money.

Dany Laferriere was awarded the Prix Médicis earlier this month for his novel L'énigme du retour (The Enigma of Return), which is "a fictionalised account of the 56-year-old author's soul-wrenching return to his native Haiti to attend his father's funeral". The Prix Médicis étranger, for the best foreign novel, was awarded to Dave Eggers for What Is the What.

Canadian, American writers win French literary prizes

More winners of this year's major French literary awards:

Prix Femina: Personne by Gwenaëlle Aubry

Prix Académie Française: Les Onze by Pierre Michon

Prix Interallié: Jan Karski by Yannick Haenel

Michel Houellebecq is the winner of this year's Prix Goncourt for La carte et le territoire (The Map and the Territory), a novel which "satirises the Paris art world in the tale of Jed Martin, an artist who gains global fame by photographing old Michelin maps."

Satirist Houellebecq wins France's top book prize

Thanks kidzdoc!

I'm still looking for an English language article about the Prix Renaudot, which is always announced on the same day as the Prix Goncourt, but several news stories in French have announced that Virginie Despentes is this year's winner, for her novel Apocalypse bébé:

Virginie Despentes prix Renaudot pour "Apocalypse bébé"

Indeed Virgine Despentes won the Prix Renaudot, here is a link I found.

http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct2=us%2F0_0_s_2_0_t&usg=AFQjCNEi3r... press review 9 November 2010

Sorry, but it's not only about that price.

Prix Médicis Etranger shortlist for 2011:
For authors, translated into French, whose fame does not yet match their talent, the list includes eleven titles:

Eleanor Catton , The Rehearsal (Denoel)
Jens Christian Grondahl, four days in March (Gallimard)
David Grossman, To the End of the Land (Threshold)
Jonathan Franzen , Freedom (L'Olivier)
Marco Lodoli , The Pretenders (POL)
Peter Manseau , Songs for the butcher's daughter (Christian Bourgois)
Joseph O'Connor, Muse (Phoebus)
Alessandro Piperno, Persecution (Liana Levi)
Elena Rjevskaïa, Carnets de l'interprète de guerre (Christian Bourgois)
Ferdinand von Schirach, Crimes (Gallimard)
Steve Sem-Sandberg, The Dispossessed (Robert Laffont)

Prix Goncourt 2011: Alexis Jenni with L’Art français de la guerre
Prix Renaudot 2011: Emmanuel Carrère with Limonov

Quite a few prestigious French literary prizes were awarded these past few days:
– Prix Goncourt: Le sermon sur la chute de Rome by Jérôme Ferrari
– Prix Médicis: Féerie générale by Pireyre Emmanuelle
– Prix Médicis (Essai): Congo by David Van Reybrouck
– Prix Médicis (Étranger): The Retrospective by A. B. Yehoshua
– Prix Fémina: Peste et Choléra by Patrick Deville
– Prix Fémina (Étranger): The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
– Prix Fémina (Essai): Ethno-Romanby Tobie Nathan
– Prix Renaudot: Notre-Dame du Nil by Scholastique Mukasonga

The Dernière sélection pour le prix Goncourt 2013, cutting the list down to four contenders for the most prestigious French literary prize.

Pierre Lemaître / Au revoir là-haut

Jean-Philippe Toussaint / Nue

Karine Tuil / L'invention de nos vies

Frédéric Verger / Arden

Pierre Lemaitre has won the Prix Goncourt in France, for his latest novel Au revoir là-haut

Laureates Prix Médicis; Terminus radieux – Antoine Volodine

Lydie Salvayre won the Prix Goncourt for Pas pleurer, and David Foenkinos won the Prix Renaudot for Charlotte.

The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud, an Algerian journalist, won this year's Goncourt du premier roman, the "first prize" Goncourt. It's narrated by the brother of the unnamed Arab that Meursault from Camus' The Stranger killed on a beach in Oran, and this novel provides a perspective of the day's fateful events from the murdered man's standpoint. It will be published in the US next month and in the UK in July; I'll definitely read it this summer, after I re-read the new translation of Camus' classic by Sandra Smith, which was released as The Outsider.

NYT: Goncourt First Novel Prize Is Awarded to Kamel Daoud of Algeria

For 2018, we have:

Prix Femina: Le Lambeau by Philippe Lançon
Prix Femina du meilleur roman étranger: La Neuvième heure by Alice McDermott
Prix Femina de l'essai: Gaspard de la nuit by Elisabeth de Fontenay

Prix Médicis: Idiotie by Pierre Guyotat

And as of today:

Prix Goncourt: Leurs enfants après eux by Nicolas Mathieu
Prix Renaudot: Le sillon by Valérie Manteau

Congratulations to the Senegalese author Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, the first writer from sub-Saharan Africa to win the Prix Goncourt:

"His novel, La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (The Most Secret Memory of Men), tells the story of a young Senegalese writer living in Paris who stumbles by chance across a novel published in 1938 by a fictional African author named TC Elimane, nicknamed “the Black Rimbaud” by an ecstatic Paris media.
"The story, described as a reflection on the links between fiction and reality, echoes the real-life experience of the Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem, who in 1968 became the first African winner of another celebrated French literary prize, the Prix Renaudot, but was later accused of plagiarism, fled France and vanished from public life."

The Prix Renaudot this year went to the prolific French-speaking Belgian novelist Amélie Nothomb for Premier sang (First Blood), dedicated to her father who died last year.

The Guardian: Senegal’s Mohamed Mbougar Sarr wins top French literary prize

The 2022 Prix Goncourt has been awarded to
Brigitte Giraud for Vivre Vite.

Other books on the short list were:
Giuliano da Empoli: Le Mage du Kremlin
Cloé Korman: Les Presque sœurs
Makenzy Orcel: Une somme humaine