Prix Goncourt Winners Join Prix Goncourt Winners The Prix Goncourt (French: Le prix Goncourt, The Goncourt Prize) is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the The Prix Goncourt (French: Le prix Goncourt, The Goncourt Prize) is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year". It is considered the most important literary award in France. Four other prizes are also awarded: prix Goncourt du Premier Roman (first novel), prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle (short story), prix Goncourt de la Poésie (poetry) and prix Goncourt de la Biographie (biography). Prix Goncourt P Prix Goncourt The Prix Goncourt (Le prix Goncourt or "The Goncourt Prize") is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year".

Four other prizes are also awarded which are: prix Goncourt du Premier Roman (first novel), prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle (short story), prix Goncourt de la Poésie (poetry) and prix Goncourt de la Biographie (biography). History Edmond de Goncourt, a successful author, critic, and publisher, bequeathed his entire estate for the foundation and maintenance of the académie Goncourt. In honour of his brother and collaborator, Jules Alfred Huot de Goncourt, (1830-1870), the académie has awarded the prix Goncourt every December since 1903. The jury that determines the winner meets at the Drouant restaurant to make its decision. The award, though nominal, ensures the winner celebrity status and a boost in sales. The award may only be given to an author once, and has never been given to an author twice except in one case. Romain Gary won it in 1956 for Les racines du ciel, and then won it again under the pseudonym Émile Ajar in 1975 for La vie devant soi.

A few of the authors who have won the prize are: Marcel Proust , Jean Fayard, Simone de Beauvoir , Georges Duhamel, Alphonse de Châteaubriant, Antonine Maillet. Some decisions for awarding the prize were controversial, the most famous case being the decision to award the prize in 1919 to Marcel Proust; this was met with indignation, since many in the public felt that the prize should have gone to Roland Dorgelès for Les Croix de bois, a novel about the First World War, for the following reasons: the prize was supposed to be awarded to promising young authors, whereas Proust was 48 (Proust was a beginning author, though, which is the only eligibility requirement for the prize, age being unimportant); and, this was immediately after the end of the war, where Dorgelès had fought, whereas Proust had been deemed unfit for service for medical reasons (he had asthma ). The 1932 prize was controversial for passing up Céline, and the voting process became the basis of the 1992 book Goncourt 32 by Eugène Saccomano.

In 1987, the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens was established, as a collaboration between the académie Goncourt, the French Ministry of Education, and Fnac, a book, music, and movie retailer. The Prix Renaudot is announced at the same ceremony as the Prix Goncourt, it has become something of a second-place prize. Prix Goncourt Key "nta" = No [English] Translation Available, as of March 2009 translation date is of first translation. Other awards In addition to the prix Goncourt for a novel, the academy awards 4 other awards for: first novel, short story, biography and poetry. As of March 2009, the académie changed the award name by dropping "bourses" ("scholarship") from the title. The prefix "prix" can be included or not, such as "Prix Goncourt de la Poésie" (Goncourt prize for Poetry) or "Goncourt de la Poésie" (Goncourt of Poetry). For example: "Claude Vigée was awarded a Goncourt de la Poésie in 2008".

Or, "Claude Vigée won the 2008 prix Goncourt de la Poésie". The award titles are: The winners are listed below.

Prix Goncourt de la Biographie Awarded in partnership with the city of Nancy 1999 - Claude Pichois, Colette 2000 - Dominique Bona, Berthe Morisot 2001 - Philippe Besson, En l'absence des hommes 2002 - Jean-Paul Goujon, Une Vie Secrète ( 1870-1925 ); Mille lettres de Pierre Louÿs à Georges Louis (1890-1917) 2003 - Pierre Billard, Louis Malle 2004 - Claude Dufresne, Appelez-moi George Sand 2005 - Thibaut d'Anthonay, Jean Lorrain 2006 - Angie David, Dominique Aury 2007 - Patrice Locmant, Huysmans, le forçat de la vie 2008 - Jennifer Lesieur, Jack London 2009 - Viviane Forrester, Virginia Woolf Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle Awarded in partnership with the city of Strasbourg 1999 - Elvire de

 Brissac, Les anges d'en bas 2000 - Catherine Paysan, Les Désarmés 2001 - Stéphane Denis, Elle a maigri pour le festival 2002 - Sébastien Lapaque, Mythologie Française 2003 - Philippe Claudel, Les petites mécaniques 2004 - Olivier Adam, Passer l'hiver 2005 - Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud, Singe savant tabassé par deux clowns 2006 - Franz Bartelt, Le Bar des habitudes 2007 - Brigitte Giraud, L'Amour est très surestimé 2008 - Jean-Yves Masson, Ultimes vérités sur la mort du nageur Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman Awarded in partnership with the municipality of Paris 1990 - Hélène de Monferrand, Les amies d'Héloïse 1991 - Armande Gobry-Valle, Iblis ou la défroque du serpent 1992 - Nita Rousseau, Les

 iris bleus 1993 - Bernard Chambaz, L'arbre de vies 1994 - Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, Vétérinaires 1995 - Florence Seyvos, Les apparitions 1996 - Yann Moix, Jubilations vers le ciel 1997 - Jean-Christophe Rufin, L'abyssin 1998 - Shan Sa, Porte de la paix céleste 1999 - Nicolas Michel, Un revenant 2000 - Benjamin Berton, Sauvageons 2001 - Salim Bachi, Le chien d'Ulysse 2002 - Soazig Aaron, Le non de Klara 2003 - Claire Delannoy, La guerre, l'Amérique 2004 - Françoise Dorner, La fille du rang derrière 2005 - Alain Jaubert, Val Paradis 2006 - Hédi Kaddour, Waltenberg 2008 - Jakuta Alikavazovic, Corps volatils 20

09 - Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, Une éducation libertine Prix Goncourt de la Poésie Established through the bequest of Adrien Bertrand (Prix Goncourt in 1914) 1985 - Claude Roy Project MUSE - The Booker Prize and the Prix Goncourt: A Case Study of Award-Winning Novels in Translation The Booker Prize and the Prix Goncourt: A Case Study of Award-Winning Novels in Translation Susan Pickford (bio) The global publishing industry has witnessed the rise to hegemony of English-language cultural products in recent decades.

1 A parallel rise in corporate sponsorship of the arts, which is taking over from more traditional forms of patronage as the central mechanism of cultural legitimation, 2 has similarly led to the dominance of a model of cultural capital developed in a highly liberalized publishing industry that places a premium on economic, rather than symbolic, value. This article compares the circulation and reception of two sets of prize-winning novels in translation within this context, paying particular attention to the forces and mechanisms governing the international circulation of the texts and reading the resulting translation flows as a significant indicator of cultural and economic hierarchies within the global polysystem. 3 As Itamar Even-Zohar's polysystem theory noted as early as the 1970s, the place allotted to literature in translation in a given culture depends on the relative degree of cultural dominance between the two languages. This reflects the uneven distribution of political, social, and cultural forms of capital across languages. 4 The impact of such hierarchies of capital can be tracked by studying the relative flows of translations between publishing markets.

English is by far the most central language in the global polysystem: its share of the international publishing market rose from 40 to 60 percent between 1979 and 2004. 5 Even an otherwise dominant language like French cannot compete with the centrality of English: French publishers bring out on average 4,100 translations from English a year, 6 while publishers throughout the English-speaking world acquire the rights to a mere 350 French titles. 7 To borrow a metaphor from ecolinguistics, which considers language communities as elements of a wider linguistic ecosystem, English-language writing is a highly successful introduced species, outcompeting other languages for marketplace visibility. [End Page 221] One way to track the hegemonic reach of English in the international literary marketplace, then, is to follow the fortunes of novels as they cross national and linguistic borders. This article does so by focusing on novels short-listed for and awarded the two leading literary prizes in France and Britain, the Prix Goncourt and the Booker Prize, respectively, since the latter was founded in 1969, through to 2009. This corpus lends itself to such a study in three ways.

First, the French and British prizewinners and short-listees represent two coherent, clearly delineated, self-contained sets of data, allowing for clear comparisons. Second, as books that, almost by definition, enjoyed relatively high levels of marketplace visibility, the level of international interest and therefore of translations can reasonably be expected to be higher than in the case of a data set of randomly selected novels. The corpus thus allows for a relatively systematic study of the mechanisms by which translations circulate internationally. Third, it enables us to study not only the circulation of the texts in translation but also the differing constructions of literary prestige within which the works were selected on each side of the Channel. This case study begins by considering the time taken to translate the novels for the French and U.K.-U.S. markets and outlining the positions occupied by the translations in their respective publishing markets by drawing up a typology of their publishers. It also studies the paratext of the translations to measure the visibility of each prize in the respective foreign-language market. 8 Figure 1 illustrates the time taken to translate prizewinners in each direction. The results can be read as revealing the evolution of the prestige of each prize in its respective foreign markets over the period.

Most Goncourt winners are translated relatively rapidly into English. A small number of titles have taken as long as nine years to be translated, 9 and there have been a few years when the prizewinners remained untranslated. 10 Overall, however, most winners are translated within two or three years. This suggests a relatively consistent level of visibility for the Prix Goncourt in the English-speaking publishing world, 11 reflecting the fact that the award, founded in 1903, was firmly established in its role as an arbiter of cultural value by the 1960s. French translations of Booker Prize winners, on the other hand, show a clear evolution over the period. Winners from the early years of the Booker Prize have on occasion taken decades to cross the Channel, reflecting the prize's struggle to attain cultural arbiter status in its early years. A number of works from the early 1970s were never translated.

With a couple of exceptions, which I will return to, the time taken to translate Booker [End Page 222] Prize winners dropped dramatically in the late 1970s and early 1980s as the Booker achieved greater recognition both in Britain and in the international publishing marketplace. Click for larger view Figure 1. Number of years taken to translate Goncourt and Booker winners, 1969-2006. A similar trend is apparent in the titles short-listed for the prizes. The Goncourt label does not extend far beyond the prize itself into the short list; the translation of short-listed titles remains somewhat haphazard. This reflects the lack of publicity granted to the Goncourt short list, which was not made public prior to 1973 and which has never attained the level of media interest enjoyed by the Booker short list. 12 No published source gives the full list of Goncourt short-listed titles, despite the rash of Goncourt-related titles that appeared in recent years to mark the hundredth anniversary of the prize. Nor is the list available on the Académie Goncourt Web site.

Being short-listed for the Prix Goncourt does not represent a significant increase in visibility for French novels, and therefore does relatively little to increase their chances of being translated. This represents a significant contrast with the prestige of the Booker short list. As the international recognition of the Booker grew, short-listed Booker titles were increasingly translated, and within shorter and shorter time spans, until by the late 1990s almost every title was being translated within one or two years. 13 An examination of the paratext of the novels in the corpus likewise suggests that French publishers came to attribute increasing prestige to the Booker over the period, eventually extending beyond the prize itself to [End Page 223] the Booker short list. Rather curiously, the first translation to mention the Booker Prize in its paratext is the 1973 French version of Susan Hill's Bird of Night (Oiseau de nuit, trans. R. Eddé), short-listed the previous year. The paratext wrongly claims that Hill won the prize. That such a mistake was possible is in itself indicative of the prize's relatively lowly status at the time.

The same translation refers to Hill's win of the Somerset Maugham Prize, which it tellingly describes as the "British Prix Goncourt." The Booker then remains unmentioned in the French paratext until the 1982 translation of Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore (A la dérive, trans. C. M. Huet), by which time it is described as "England's leading literary prize." By the following year, V. S. Naipaul's previously untranslated 1971 winner, In a Free State (Dis-moi qui tuer, trans. A. Saumont), bore the words "awarded the English equivalent to the Prix Goncourt" on the back cover. 14 Prestige creep begins to extend to the short list in 1985, when Swift's Pays des Eaux (trans. R. Davreux) was marketed as having been "selected for the Booker Prize, the leading literary prize in Britain." 15 Although never entirely systematic, such references become much more regular toward the end of the period, and references to the prestigious nature of the prize tail off as its cultural significance is increasingly expected to be familiar to the collective readership.

As might be expected, the paratext of English translations of Goncourt winners shows no similar evolution, as the Prix Goncourt was a long familiar presence in the U.K.-U.S. market by the 1960s. The very first translation from the period in question, Félicien Marceau's Creezy (trans. J. A. Underwood, London: Calder and Boyars, 1970), mentions the prize three times—once in a front cover strap and twice on the back cover, where it is described as "coveted." Mentions of the prize feature consistently (if not systematically) over the period, but in contrast to the Booker Prize, prestige creep is almost nonexistent. Only four translations from the sample mention the title's runner-up status, the earliest in 1988, as compared to nearly thirty for English-to-French translations. This reflects the difference in marketing strategies between the two prizes: the Goncourt focuses its efforts on the prize announcement itself (a highly ritualized moment of cultural spectacle), whereas the Booker prefers to build the excitement in several stages, beginning with the announcement of the long list, then the short list, then the prize itself.

This is in line with the Booker's commercial construction of cultural prestige (a point I return to later), as it enables all the short-listed titles to benefit from increased sales. 16 In a similar vein, the English translations associate prizewinning and best-selling status as early as 1976, when Pascal [End Page 224] Lainé's Web of Lace (trans. George Crowther) was given a front cover featuring both the prize and the statement "200,000 copies sold in France." Another form of cultural imbalance becomes clear when we look at the typology of publishers behind the translations and their target readership. The vast majority of Booker Prize winners and short-listees have been published in French by mainstream publishers of middlebrow fiction, such as Plon, Belfond, Calmann Lévy, Denoël, Laffont, Rivages, and Stock. The translations are frequently issued in a large "beach blockbuster" format and later reissued in mass-market paperback collections such as Points and 10/18. There is a particularly striking contrast between the profile of the companies that publish Goncourt winners and those that publish Booker translations.

The trio of leading highbrow publishers, Gallimard, Grasset, and Seuil, known collectively (and disparagingly) as Galligrasseuil, is infamous for its near monopoly on literary prestige, winning 75 percent of Goncourts since 1970. However, Galligrasseuil accounts for only 22 out of a total of 170 Booker translations—just 12 percent. 17 Prix Goncourt winners and short-listed titles, on the other hand, are frequently translated by independent houses, such as Hesperus, Pushkin, and Dalkey Archive. A number of titles are published by university presses. This phenomenon has become particularly striking in recent years. In the last decade, only three of the translations have been published by mainstream corporate companies—Heinemann for Ahmadou Kourouma's Allah Is Not Obliged (trans. Frank Wynne) in 2006, Harper for Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones (trans. Charlotte Mandell) in 2009, and Chatto and Windus, part of the Random House stable, for Atiq Rahimi's Patience Stone (trans.

Polly MacLean) in 2009. 18 Increasing concentration and competition in the publishing world mean that mainstream U.K.-U.S. publishers are turning their backs on translation, which inevitably involves costs in terms of rights acquisition and translation fees, while the sales potential of translated titles is perceived as being limited. This sector of the market is thus left to the independent fringe. 19 As a result, Prix Goncourt novels in English are regularly (and increasingly) sited within the sphere of restricted production, while Booker Prize novels in French are, almost without exception, located within the paradigm of large-scale production. 20 This suggests that U.K.-U.S. publishers see the Prix Goncourt as a reliable arbiter of a purely literary form of prestige, while the French market sees the Booker more as an indicator of commercial potential. While France has traditionally placed a premium on the symbolic value of cultural goods, intervening politically to grant them special status in an increasingly liberalized international marketplace, 21 the [End Page 225] cultural transfer in the case of Booker translations obeys primarily economic motivations.

The dominance of English in the global polysystem means that the translation rights for best-selling novels are out of the reach of smaller publishers that continue to place a premium on symbolic value. Once Booker novels became best sellers, then, they naturally find their way to the larger publishing companies that can outbid their rivals—in other words, middlebrow publishers such as Plon, Belfond, Denoël, and Fayard. 22 Conversely, the dominance of English in the global polysystem means that major American and British publishers show little interest in translation, which offers more symbolic than economic rewards. The translation rights to Goncourt winners thus remain affordable to publishers who place a premium on prestige value: their mission statements emphasize the exceptional and lasting cultural value of the material published. 23 The question of the respective readership of these novels can only be approached obliquely. Print runs and sales data are largely unavailable on grounds of commercial confidentiality. 24 Nor is their presence in libraries a reliable indicator, given library weeding policies, which disproportionately affect older titles. Some general indications of the nature of the readership are given by the categories of reprints and the kinds of works granted an extended life on the market. Both samples reveal a high level of reprints.

Of the 171 books in the French sample, 120 (or 70 percent) were reissued as mass market paperbacks, book club editions, large print editions, or retranslations. Of the fifty-seven English titles, forty-one (72 percent) are available in both hardback and paperback editions—an unexpectedly high proportion, largely explained by the existence of separate editions on each side of the Atlantic. However, the range of types of reprint is narrower in English: there are no large print or book club editions, suggesting a narrower range of target readerships. Interestingly, some of the works are available in Kindle editions, indicating that the publishers are targeting keen readers in a high socioeconomic bracket. It is also worthy of note that seven of the thirteen works reissued after five years or more are by Francophone writers from outside the métropole (Simone Schwarz-Bart, Patrick Chamoiseau, Andrei Makine, Elie Wiesel, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Anne Hébert, and Antonine Maillet).

This reflects the increasingly diverse profile of Goncourt winners (a point I return to later) and a burgeoning interest in writing from the margins, itself largely shaped by the growth of postcolonial studies within the academy and the emergence of a market for what Graham Huggan terms "the postcolonial exotic." 25 This echoes the shift across the English corpus from general trade to fringe and university presses, suggesting a concomitant shift from [End Page 226] a general to a specialist readership equipped with a high degree of cultural capital. In turn, this shift reflects the place of translated literature within the Anglo-American polysystem, from a relatively central position during the postwar boom, which saw new writers from the margins (particularly Latin America) enjoying mainstream recognition in the 1960s and 1970s, 26 to the current marginalization of literary fiction in translation. 27 I now turn to a comparison of the two prizes and their positions as arbiters of cultural prestige, specifically addressing the issue of whether the hegemonic spread of English-language culture through translation is accompanied by the spread of a concomitant construction of cultural capital.

The two prizes are similar in terms of the amount of cultural capital they represent, each being the most prestigious prize within their respective national markets, but there have historically been significant differences in the ways the two awards have constructed this cultural capital. The Prix Goncourt was set up in 1903 according to terms laid out in the last will and testament of Edmond de Goncourt. His ambition was to legitimize the naturalist novel as a literary genre, while influencing the tastes of readers away from mediocre "industrial literature." 28 The Académie Goncourt was explicitly framed as a counterweight to the Académie Française, with the intention of placing literature on a professional footing. Membership was reserved for "professional men of letters," thereby institutionalizing peer judgment as the key criterion in constructing literary respectability. 29 Accordingly, the prize rules stipulated that jury members be selected by their peers and elected to the Académie Goncourt for life, thereby creating an elitist form of symbolic prestige through peer judgment. 30 This apparent preference for purely symbolic forms of reward is also evident in the failure of the prize purse to keep up with inflation.

The purse initially represented a substantial boost to the income of winners, as encouragement for France's talented young writers. However, it has lost nearly all of its financial value over the years and is now worth less than 10 euros. In fact, Patrick Rambaud, winner in 1997 and now member of the Académie Goncourt, has stated that most winners prefer to frame rather than cash their checks. 31 Instead of offering financial support and encouragement to little-known young authors as originally intended, the prize has been increasingly monopolized by France's literary lions, as shown by the hotly debated 1984 win by the then seventy-year-old Marguerite Duras, who had published her first book decades previously. A number of winning authors appear to subscribe to this elitist model of prestige, in which symbolic rewards are offered by a small coterie of peers rather than the wider readership. [End Page 227] Sylvie Ducas quotes one Goncourt winner as saying, "When I write, I write for a few people—always the same ones.

I write for three or four people, at most about ten." 32 When Tom Maschler of Jonathan Cape put forward the idea of founding a new literary prize for the British book market in the late 1960s, he explicitly suggested modeling it on the Goncourt. However, there was a significant difference between the two prizes. According to the Booker administrator Martyn Goff, the intention of Booker PLC was to "reward merit, raise the stature of the author in the eyes of the public and increase the sale of books." 33 Indeed, it was stated at the prize's press launch that it was hoped the prize would "help to narrow the all too frequent gap between artistic and commercial success." 34 This forms a sharp contrast with the Goncourt brothers' hostility to selling books for the sake of it: "Some books are purely decorative. They are the ones that are sold the most and read the least." 35 This difference in conception is carried over into the prize rules.

First of all, the Booker was to be judged by an annually selected panel, traditionally including a "man on the street." In recent years, this tradition has evolved into the participation of media personalities such as actress Joanna Lumley and comedian Sue Perkins. This difference in jury makeup symbolically sites the power to award prestige not in a jury of peers but in the hands of the public. John Carey, jury chairman in 1982, described the prize's role as helping to "break down the barrier between the ordinary reader and contemporary writing, which half a century of Modernism has painstakingly built up." 36 This deliberately antielitist construction of value may explain the striking tendency in recent years to reward postcolonial writers such as Kiran Desai and Aravind Adiga, who as symbolic "outsiders" effectively represent a challenge to the academy's tendency to reward its own. The second difference was the prize purse. The Booker framed its prestige in economic terms from the outset: as the Sunday Times noted in June 1968: "Britain comes pretty low in the world's literary award stakes. Our top prize is a mere £1,000, which is puny compared to some American handouts.

So far, it also lacks the prestige of French prizes, such as the Goncourt." 37 It continues to do so, engaging in an inflationary arms race with other prizes such as the Orange, so that the prize purse now stands at £50,000. The Booker Prize thus from the outset measured prestige in terms of economic rather than symbolic rewards. Despite these structural differences, the two prizes have converged in recent decades in their construction of prestige, increasingly defined in terms of cultural spectacle. James English has noted that literary prizes became a [End Page 228] significant phenomenon in postwar publishing when capitalism switched from "a relatively stable period of Fordist production to a weightless economy characterised by the global consumption of cultural goods, leading to increasing demand for cultural spectacle in the literary field." 38 The annual hoopla surrounding the prize ceremonies amply fills this demand. The Booker Prize announcement has been televised since 1981. The Prix Goncourt is heavily ritualized, with the announcement taking place at the Restaurant Drouant in Paris, where the members have their names engraved on the cutlery they inherit from their predecessor.

James English has further shown how the Booker conflates economic and cultural capital, and transforms them into what he has termed "journalistic capital," measured in terms of scandal, notoriety, and celebrity. This development goes hand in hand with the emergence of what Joe Moran has called the "Star Author" system, 39 where increasing journalistic interest is paid not to authors' works but to their private lives, publishing deals, changes of agents, and so on. Claire Squires has convincingly demonstrated that this is an effect of the heavy tendency toward concentration in the publishing industry, which results in a "hierarchy of marketability" 40 and an arms race in marketing budgets for a few carefully chosen (young, photogenic) authors, and smaller and smaller crumbs for the rest. There has come to be a symbiotic relationship between literary prestige and media presence, as successful authors are called on to promote their books in the media. Indeed, the Booker rules stipulate that the publishers of the winning title must agree to pay a total of £10,000 toward advertising costs.

41 The translation rates studied in the first part of this article suggest that French publishers are increasingly drawn by the English model of attributing prestige to titles that achieve high marketplace visibility by being placed on the Booker short list. The Booker's occasional failures to pick commercially successful books are reflected in terms of translation. Keri Hulme's The Bone People (1985) and James Kelman's How Late It Was, How Late (1994) were both decried as unreadable, both were relative commercial failures— and both clearly buck the trend toward ever shorter transfer times from English into French ( Figure 2 ). 42 Likewise, the paratext of French translations of Booker Prize novels increasingly conflates literary quality and international marketplace visibility. The back cover of Arundhati Roy's 1997 winner (trans. C. Demanuelli) reads: "The God of Small Things, her debut novel, was hailed as a literary phenomenon throughout the English-speaking world and was awarded the Booker Prize in 1997." Trezza Azzopardi's short-listed La Cachette (trans. E. Soonckindt): "this exceptional [End Page 229] debut novel . .

. became an international literary event and was nominated for the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000." Most striking of all, the blurb for Yann Martel's Histoire de Pi (trans. N. and E. Martel) reads: "the winner of the Man Booker Prize 2002 [is] both a literary and commercial miracle . . . more than four million copies sold world-wide." 43 Click for larger view Figure 2. Booker Prize-winning novels in French, years between publication and translation, 1969-2006.

One explanation for why French publishers may have adopted the Booker model is that, as James English demonstrates, it makes a virtue of scandal by capitalizing on it as a form of cultural spectacle: "scandal, or the threat and promise of scandal, is constitutive of prizes as we know them." 44 Margaret Drabble has written that "if the Booker shortlist does not arouse bitter controversy and scandal, then it has failed in its task of stimulating public interest." 45 Hilary Mantel has revealed how the press indeed seeks out controversy where there is none in order to stoke debate: "In the press there was the usual carping. We had chosen six immensely talented authors, all writing at the peak of their form. Can't argue with that, the judges thought; but we were wrong. The Sunday Times called our selection 'motheaten' and cried out for 'just one callow writer under fifty'. Callowness had not been in short supply among the entries, but we did not think it our business to encourage or reward it." 46 The chattering classes on both sides of the Channel do indeed regularly profess to be scandalized by the prizes.

Criticisms of the Booker tend to focus on instances where the "machinery of legitimation," to use Geoff Gilbert's phrase, has rewarded a work deemed to reveal an elitist approach to literary [End Page 230] value. A case in point is the reaction to Keri Hulme's 1985 win for The Bone People. Chairman Norman St. John Stevas defended the controversial choice by stating that the list was drawn up "not at all on the basis of the good read, but for being serious, major or well written." 47 This represented an implicit betrayal of the prize's populist construction of prestige and its ability to translate literary value into commercial value.

John Boyland wrote in the Irish Times in 1998 that The Bone People was a boring book that "would have found the obscurity it deserved if it hadn't won," continuing that the Booker was a "wildly over-hyped prize, [which] far from being an indicator of public taste, merely highlights the ever-widening chasm that separates the kind of books that win literary prizes from the kind of books intelligent people actually care to read." 48 In 1990, the Evening Standard described The Bone People as "the most commercially disastrous winner ever." 49 Graham Lord founded the Sunday Express Book of the Year prize (with a purse of £20,000) in explicit reaction to Hulme's Booker win. It was to be awarded to the year's "most stylish but also the compulsively readable novel." 50 Roald Dahl's speech at the 1989 Sunday Express Book of the Year awards further dwelled on the Booker's alleged elitism: Everything seems to be wrong about the Booker.

In the first place, the judges appear always to be chosen not as representatives of the general reading public—the people who actually buy books— but from a rarefied group of rather intellectual, very "literary-minded" folk who choose books more for their literary elegance than their entertainment value. . . . But the real disservice the Booker does when it gives the prize to what they call a beautifully crafted book, which is often beautifully boring, is that about 50,000 poor saps rush out and buy it and then feel thoroughly cheated by the time they've struggled through the first fifty pages. 51 These populist criticisms were echoed in 1994 when James Kelman won for How Late It Was, How Late. Although a few commentators have faulted the Booker for not being elitist enough, 52 this seems to be a distinctly minority view. The Prix Goncourt, on the other hand, is attacked not for its espousal of elitism as a value per se, but rather on the grounds that peer judgement is a defective "barometer of literary genius," 53 as jury members are liable to be influenced by extraliterary criteria.

The Goncourt had long been criticized for the inherent corruptibility of the jury process: Le Monde published an article in November 1968 that argued, "The implacable accusation is made after every verdict: the prizes go not to books, but to the publishers who [End Page 231] have the juries in their grasp." 54 These accusations gained new currency in the 1970s and 1980s, as the French book market increasingly fell prey to cultural globalization and the phenomenon of "best-sellérisation," arising from the new capacity to focus media attention on a few key titles. 55 Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman's provocative Les Intellocrates (Paris: Ramsay, 1981) gave fresh impetus to the debate in the early 1980s by providing compelling evidence of the sort of back-scratching long rumored to go on behind the scenes. They revealed, for example, that 85 percent of the jury members are employees of or published by Galligrasseuil, which accounts for 56 percent of the short-listed titles and 64 percent of the winners since 1969.

It seems that the French book market was ripe for a reevaluation of its model of attributing cultural prestige, exchanging peer judgment for a more inclusive approach drawing on a wider readership. A number of prizes founded in the 1970s introduced reader juries, including Elle magazine's Grand Prix des Lectrices (1970), the Prix RTL (1975), and the Prix du Livre Inter (1975), although none of these prizes rivals the Goncourt in terms of prestige. Further evidence of the fact that the French book market was ripe for a change in its model of prestige is to be found in the results of a reader survey published in the November 1981 issue of Lire magazine. The survey is explicitly framed as a response to the exclusion of ordinary readers from the field of literary debate: "Heaven knows that jury members, publishers, shortlisted authors, winning authors, booksellers, critics, ambitious wannabe professionals, and so on, have been asked often enough for their opinions and stories.

But those of the readers, the consumers, the people who pay for it all—never!" Many readers wrote in to criticize the major prizes: "It's not a literary consecration, it's a marketing ploy" (unemployed, age twenty-three); "I trust the Goncourt the least, because it's unquestionably the one that gives the publisher the biggest profits. So its jury must be under the most pressure" (student, age twenty-two). It became apparent readers placed more trust in awards whose jury model resembled that of the Booker Prize: "I prefer prizes awarded based on consulting a wide readership" (student, age twenty); "Prizes like the Prix des Libraires, the Prix du magazine Elle, and the Prix RTL are all very successful" (unemployed, age twenty-four). Some readers criticized prizes for their unacceptably highbrow definition of literary value: "Take Michel del Castillo's novel Le vent de la nuit, that I have read several times, which won the Prix des Libraires—it's marvellous!

Now take Les Bêtises [Prix Goncourt 1971], by Jacques Laurent if I remember aright: boring, pretentious, tedious!" (unemployed, age twenty-six); "Literary prizes are a huge scam designed to shift vast quantities of [End Page 232] books that are very often badly written, uninteresting, and unreadable. For quite a few years now, the fact that a book has won a prize has been reason enough not to buy it" (retired teacher, age sixty-one). 56 The respondents were typically young, female, and (having subscribed to Lire) presumably keen readers: the archetypal profile of a prolific book purchaser. 57 The French publishing world could not afford to ignore their opinion. As a result, it may well be the case that the Prix Goncourt progressively adopted the U.K.-U.S. model of cultural prestige, along with its novels, in order to retain some credibility as an institution of legitimation. Interestingly, the Goncourt rules were changed in 2008, bringing them closer in line with the Booker's apparent impartiality.

Members are no longer allowed to be employed by a publishing company and lose their eligibility when they reach the age of eighty. This reflects a reversal in influence between the two prizes; as James English points out, the Booker tinkered with its rules on eligibility and nomination and its timetable in the early years to make them more Goncourt-like. 58 The globalization of the model of journalistic capital pioneered by the Booker Prize appears to have had a significant impact on the Prix Goncourt. While the majority of winners are still from the Galligrasseuil stable, 59 their profile is converging with that of Booker Prize winners. In recent years, both short lists, if not the prizes, appear increasingly to reward debut novels. Examples include Magnus Mills's Restraint of Beasts, Claire Morrall's Astonishing Splashes of Colour, and Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men in the case of the Booker, and Jean Rouaud's Champs d'honneur, Pascale Roze's Le Chasseur Zéro, and Jonathan Littell's Les Bienveillantes in France.

The French case is all the more striking in the light of Edmonde Charle-Roux's statement that there has been an unwritten policy since the 1960s not to award the Prix Goncourt to literary debuts. 60 The French prize-winning profile has also expanded since the 1980s to include more women and ethnic minority writers, echoing the diversity of the Booker, which Graham Huggan has described as participating in "the global commodification of cultural difference" that drives the international publishing industry. 61 Between 1903 and 1980, the Goncourt was won by six women and eight authors from ethnic minority or non-Francophone backgrounds. 62 Since 1980, there have been five women and eight writers from nonwhite or non-Francophone backgrounds. 63 This diversification can be read in terms of the increasing importance in French publishing of literary celebrity, frequently in the myth of the "outsider made good" identified by Joe Moran. 64 The media increasingly focus [End Page 233] on the backstories of Prix Goncourt winners, which often offer some kind of journalistic hook.

65 Andrei Makine pretended his novels were translated from Russian to get a hearing from publishers. Pascale Roze struggled back from a life-threatening aneurysm to win with her first novel. The self-taught newspaper vendor Jean Rouaud won a David-and-Goliath contest against the literary luminary Philippe Labro. 66 Jonathan Littell, an American in France, won with the controversial fictional memoirs of an unrepentant SS officer. Atiq Rahimi fled Afghanistan as a political refugee and won with his first attempt at a novel in French. The synergy of stardom and authorhood came to almost perfect completion in 2007, when a novel by France's best-known newsreader, Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, was long-listed for the prize. All of these trends came together in 2009, when it was announced that the Prix Goncourt had been awarded to Marie N'Diaye for Trois femmes puissantes, published by Gallimard. Press comment focused largely on the fact that the Franco-Senegalese N'Diaye was the first ethnic minority woman to win the prize.

Further controversy was stirred in the following days when the magazine Les Inrockuptibles published an interview with N'Diaye in which she said she had moved to Berlin as a result the election of President Sarkozy, as she found his policies "monstrous." Eric Raoult, a member of parliament from Sarkozy's UMP party, caused a press storm by criticizing N'Diaye for insulting the presidency and claiming that Goncourt winners had a duty to protect France's image internationally. The following year, the Prix Goncourt went to the enfant terrible of French literature, Michel Houellebecq, known as much for his contentious views on Islam (he was prosecuted for inciting racial hatred, and cleared) as for the provocative handling of themes such as sex tourism in his novels. As L'Express noted, his appearance at the prize ceremony sparked a frenzy indicative of his star status: "Dès qu'il apparaît. . . une forêt de téléphones portables surgit audessus des têtes: tout le monde veut le filmer." 67 These two episodes are indicative of an increasing synergy between literary value and media presence in the French publishing marketplace.

In an increasingly homogenized global culture in which English is the undisputed lingua franca, the model of cultural prestige pioneered in the U.K. and U.S. book markets is well on its way to achieving a supremacy equaled only by the dominance of authors writing in English in the international marketplace. [End Page 234] Susan Pickford Susan Pickford is maître de conférences (senior lecturer) in French to English translation at Université Paris 13. Her research interests include the social and cultural history of translation and translators from the eighteenth century to the present day. She is also an experienced translator and member of the executive committee of the French Literary Translators' Association. Her most recent translation is Bernard Bourdin, The Theological-Political Origins of the Modern State (Catholic University of America Press, 2010). Notes 1. I use "English-language" here and throughout to refer predominantly, although not exclusively, to Anglo-American cultural products. This shorthand should not be read as implying that English-language culture is monolithic; there are, of course, center-periphery dynamics at play within the English-speaking world. 2.

See Graham Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins (New York: Routledge, 2001), 105-106. 3. Polysystem theory, developed by the Israeli scholar Itamar Even-Zohar in the 1970s, posits that translation occupies a more or less peripheral place within the aggregate of literary forms in a given culture, depending on whether the culture in question is undergoing a period of cultural innovation or conservatism. For a brief introduction to the topic, see Jeremy Munday, Introducing Translation Studies (New York: Routledge, 2001), 109-111. For an account of the recent rise of the "sociological turn" in translation studies, see Michaela Wolf, "The Emergence of a Sociology of Translation," in Constructing a Sociology of Translation, ed. Michaela Wolf and Alexandra Fukari (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007), 1-38; and Michaela Wolf, ed., Übersetzen-Translating-Traduire: Towards a "Social Turn"?

(Berlin/Vienna: LIT, 2006). Norbert Bachleitner has recently explicitly linked translation studies and book history by adapting Robert Darnton's communications circuit, highlighting the translator's role as a cross-cultural mediator. Norbert Bachleitner, "A Proposal to Include Book History in Translation Studies. Illustrated with German Translations of Scott and Flaubert," Arcadia: International Journal for Literary Studies 44, no. 2 (December 2009): 443-474. 4. Pascale Casanova, "Consécration et accumulation de capital littéraire: La traduction comme échange inégal," Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 144 (2002/2): 8. 51. Cachin, "A tout prix," 164. 52. Ashley, "Le Prix Goncourt et la Grande-Bretagne," 407. 53. English, "Literary Prize Phenomenon in Context," 166. 54.

"L'accusation tombe, implacable, après chaque verdict: les prix ne sont pas donnés à des livres, ils sont donnés à des éditeurs qui tiennent les jurys dans leurs mains." Quoted in Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman, Les Intellocrates (Paris: Ramsay, 1981), 170. The subject is still regularly debated in the French media. Guy Konopnicki's Prix littéraires: La grande magouille (Paris: J. C. Gawsewitch, 2004), is the latest in a long line of similar denunciations. 55. "[Le] pouvoir nouveau des médias de concentrer toute l'attention publique sur quelques titres phares et de créer des 'coups' médiatiques." Ducas, "Faut-il brûler le Prix Goncourt?" 178-180. As James English notes, the global market demands cultural goods that are increasingly standardized to cross linguistic and cultural borders without difficulty. English, "Literary Prize Phenomenon in Context," 168. 56.

"Dieu sait qu'on a souvent sollicité les avis et témoignages des jurés, des éditeurs, des écrivains candidats, des écrivains lauréats, des libraires, des critiques, des carriéristes, etc. Mais des lecteurs, des consommateurs, des payeurs, jamais!"; "ce n'est pas une consécration de la littérature mais une opération de marketing"; "c'est au Goncourt que j'accorde le moins de confiance, car c'est sans conteste celui qui fait réaliser le plus de bénéfices à l'éditeur. C'est donc sur ce jury que les pressions doivent être les plus fortes"; "J'apprécie davantage un prix décerné après une large consultation du public"; "Des prix comme celui des Libraires, du magazine Elle, de RTL ont un net succès"; "Prenez le roman de Michel del Castillo Le vent de la nuit, que j'ai lu et relu, qui a reçu le Prix des Libraires: il est fabuleux!

Maintenant considérez Les bêtises, de Jacques Laurent si j'ai bon souvenir: ennuyeux, prétentieux, fastidieux!"; "Les prix littéraires sont une vaste escroquerie qui assure une vente importante à des livres très souvent mal écrits, peu intéressants, illisibles. Depuis pas mal d'années, un prix est une raison suffisante pour ne pas acheter le livre couronné." All quotes from Lire 75 (November 1981): 38-48. 57. See Olivier Donnat, Les pratiques culturelles des Français (Paris: Ministère de la Culture, 1997). 58. English, "Literary Prize Phenomenon in Context," 166. [End Page 239] 59. Three of the last six winners have been from outside the Galligrasseuil stable. This may be evidence of a shift in patterns of prestige attribution among French publishing companies, although it is too soon to make any definitive claims. 60.

Ashley, Prix Goncourt, 28: "c'est rarissime qu'on donne le prix Goncourt à un premier roman, et on le donne de moins en moins depuis l'aventure que nous avons eue avec Schwarz-Bart qui a fait la plus grosse vente pour Le Dernier des justes [1959]. . . . C'était un succès foudroyant, et il s'est arrêté et c'est sa femme qui écrit maintenant. Alors, à la suite de cette aventure il y a eu une 'policy', non-écrite, que sauf cas exceptionnel, on ne donnerait plus le Goncourt à un premier roman en attendant le deuxième. Ce n'est pas écrit donc ça peut changer." Nathalie Heinich examines the difficulties faced by authors who win a major prize at a critical early stage of their career in L'épreuve de la grandeur: Prix littéraires et reconnaissance (Paris: La Découverte, 1999). Jean Carrière, for instance, attributed his struggle with depression, the breakdown of his marriage, and the death of his father to his 1972 win for his second novel.

See Jean Carrière, Le Prix d'un Goncourt (Paris: Laffont/Pauvert, 1987). 61. Huggan, Postcolonial Exotic, vii. 62. Jean-Antoine Nau, born in California to French parents (1903); the French Guyanese René Maran, the first black writer to win the prize (1921); Henri Troyat, born in Moscow to Armenian parents (1938); Elsa Triolet, born in Moscow (1944); Béatrix Beck; Simone de Beauvoir (1954); Romain Gary, born in Vilnius (1956 and 1975); André Schwarz-Bart, born in France to Yiddish-speaking Polish parents (1959); Vintila Horia, born in Romania, awarded the prize in 1960 before it was withdrawn on political grounds; Anna Langfus, born in Poland (1962); Edmonde Charles-Roux (1966); and Antonine Maillet (1979).

These figures do not include authors from French-speaking countries such as Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada. 63. Marguerite Duras (1984); Tahar Ben Jelloun (1987); Patrick Chamoiseau (1992); Amin Maalouf (1993); Andrei Makine (1995); Pascale Roze (1996); Paule Constant (1998); Jonathan Littell (2006); Atiq Rahimi (2008); Marie N'Diaye (2009). 64. Moran, Star Authors, 2. 65. Conversely, Gisèle Sapiro notes that all the American publishers she interviewed attributed the atypical success of Irène Némirovsky's Suite Française and Roberto Bolaño's 2666 in translation to "the story" of each author. fichier_fichier_etude.paris.new.york.paris.pdf , 30 (accessed May 22, 2010). The early death of the author may likewise be a factor in the success of Stieg Larsson's works in translation.

66. The author biography in Ralph Manheim's 1992 translation of Rouaud's Fields of Glory, published by Harvill, is a typical example of the "outsider made good" myth: "Jean Rouaud, who has won France's most prestigious literary prize with his first novel at the age of 38—not for forty years has it gone to a previously unpublished author—has earned his living as a nightwatchman, a stagehand, a philosophy teacher, and most recently, running a newspaper kiosk in northern Paris." 67. L'Express, "Comment Michel Houellebecq a mis douze ans pour décrocher le Goncourt", accessed 7 February, 2011. "As soon as he appears. . . A forest of cell phones pops up above people's heads: everyone wants to film him".

[End Page 240] Copyright © 2011 The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing Goncourt | Define Goncourt at Dictionary.com Goncourt [gawn-koor; for 2 also English gon-koo r] /gɔ̃ˈkur; for 2 also English gɒnˈkʊər/ Spell 1. Edmond Louis Antoine Huot de [ed-mawn lwee ahn-twan y-oh duh] /ɛdˈmɔ̃ lwi ɑ̃ˈtwan üˈoʊ də/ (Show IPA), 1822–96, and his brother Jules Alfred Huot de [zhyl al-fred] /ʒyl alˈfrɛd/ (Show IPA) 1830–70, French art critics, novelists, and historians: collaborators until the death of Jules. 2. Prix [pree;; English pree] /pri;; English pri/ (Show IPA) an annual award of money made by a French literary society (Académie Goncourt) for the best prose work of the year.

Dictionary.com Unabridged Prix Goncourt - definition of Prix Goncourt by The Free Dictionary Prix Goncourt - definition of Prix Goncourt by The Free Dictionary Also found in: Thesaurus , Wikipedia . Prix Goncourt n (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) an annual prize for a work of French fiction [C20: after the Académie Goncourt, which awards the prizes, founded by the will of Edmond Goncourt (1822–96), French writer] ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend: 1. Prix Goncourt - an award given annually for contributions to French literature accolade , honor , laurels , honour , award - a tangible symbol signifying approval or distinction; "an award for bravery" Want to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us , add a link to this page, or visit the webmaster's page for free fun content . Link to this page: laurels References in periodicals archive ? The Guardian news company revealed on Tuesday that France's top literary award, the Prix Goncourt, has been won by Arabic and Persian scholar Mathias Enard for his title Boussole. Lydie Salvayre.

Pas pleurer Puis l'assistance a assiste a un vibrant hommage rendu a la regrettee romanciere, academicienne et realisatrice algerienne Assia Djebar, en presence d'eminents universitaires et de specialistes de la litterature moderne comme l'intellectuelle algerienne Amel Chaouati, presidente de l'association [beaucoup moins que] Le cercle des amis d'Assia Djebar [beaucoup plus grand que] qu'elle a fondee en 2005, Najiba Regaieg, enseignante a la faculte des lettres et des sciences humaines de Sousse, Tunisie, Jean Rouaud, romancier francais et laureat du prix Goncourt en 1990. France's top literary prize awarded to Mathias Énard | Books | The Guardian Prix Goncourt France's top literary prize awarded to Mathias Énard Énard wins Prix Goncourt for Boussole, described as ‘poetic eulogy to the long history of cultural exchanges between east and west’ Mathias Énard answers questions after receiving the award at Drouant restaurant.

Photograph: Etienne Laurent/EPA Tuesday 3 November 2015 09.20 EST Last modified on Tuesday 3 November 2015 18.55 EST Close This article is 1 year old France’s oldest and most prestigious literary accolade, the Prix Goncourt , has been awarded to the Arabic and Persian scholar Mathias Énard for his novel Boussole (Compass). The choice of Énard, who has received a succession of prizes for his work since 2003, justified his status as this year’s favourite for the award. Street of Thieves by Mathias Énard review – a glimpse into the tremors of the Arab spring Read more Boussole recounts how Frantz Ritter, an insomniac Austrian musicologist, takes to his sickbed in Vienna with an unspecified illness. Here he spends his days and sleepless nights musing on issues including his unrequited love for a Frenchwoman and the relationship between Europe and the Middle East. The novel, Énard’s ninth published work, was described by his publishers as a “poetic eulogy to the long history of cultural exchanges between east and west”.

The prize, given to “the best and most imaginative prose work of the year”, is awarded annually by the Académie Goncourt. Previous winners include Marcel Proust , Simone de Beauvoir , André Malraux, Marguerite Duras, Jonathan Littell and Michel Houellebecq . Its reward comes not in the prize money – at just €10 it is roughly the same amount as the first Prix Goncourt 1903 - but the massive book sales it guarantees, making the author a fortune. Zone by Mathias Énard – review Read more The award was announced on Tuesday by the 10-member Goncourt Académy jury after a traditional lunch of lamb stew and olives at the Drouant restaurant near the Opera Garnier in Paris. The shortlist had been revealed by the jury in Tunis as a mark of support for Tunisia’s fledgling democracy after the attack on the city’s Bardo Museum in March, when jihadi gunmen murdered 21 tourists and a police officer. All four contenders for the prize touched on the west’s turbulent relationship with Islam and the Arab world.

An early favourite was the Algerian writer Boualem Sansal ’s novel, 2084, a dystopian vision of a future Islamic caliphate that, for obvious reasons, was compared to George Orwell’s 1984 . However, Sansal, who had received support from former winner Houellebecq, did not make the final four. Énard, 43, born in Niort in south-west France , spent many years travelling across the Middle East after his studies. He settled in Barcelona in 2000, where he worked as a translator and taught Arabic at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His first novel, La Perfection du Tir, published in 2003, centred on a sniper during the civil war in an unnamed country believed to be based on Libya, and revealed his obsession with death. It received rave critical reviews and a French language prize. In 2008, he published Zone , which included a 500-page single sentence monologue about European cruelty and was given similar critical acclaim and three literary prizes.

His short story Parle-leur de Batailles, de Rois et d’Éléphants (Tell them about Battles, Kings and Elephants) was awarded the Lycéens Goncourt prize, which is judged by high school students, in 2010. Last year’s Goncourt prize went to Lydie Salvayre for Pas Pleurer (Don’t cry).

Prix Goncourt | Books | The Guardian Prix Goncourt French Vogue editor, award-winning novelist and author of a revelatory biography of Coco Chanel Published: 25 Jan 2016 Karine Tuil’s promising tale of identity theft is let down by racial and sexual stereotyping Published: 14 Dec 2015 Bookseller and prime mover behind the Booker prize, Britain’s top literary award Published: 26 Mar 2015 Author saw off competition to secure France’s top literary prize for her novel Pas Pleurer , which is focused on Spanish civil war Published: 5 Nov 2014 Martin Sokolinsky's translation of an award-winning Swiss classic story of monomania does justice to the author's poetic prose, writes JS Tennant Published: 12 May 2012 Biology teacher Alexis Jenni wins with France's top book prize with L'Art français de la guerre Published: 3 Nov 2011 Atiq Rahimi explores the plight of Afghan women in this beautiful, thoughtful novella, writes Olivia Laing Published: 22 Jan 2011 Controversial author wins France's top literary prize for novel in which character who shares his name is

 brutally killed Published: 8 Nov 2010 Leading Swiss writer and painter who won the Prix Goncourt Published: 6 Dec 2009 Goncourt prize winner Marie MDiaye says politician's call for her to tone down criticism of Sarkozy is 'grotesque' Published: 13 Nov 2009 Three Powerful Women, by French-Senegalese author Marie NDiaye, takes France's top literary honour Published: 2 Nov 2009 Afghan and Guinean novelists win Goncourt and Renaudot prizes Published: 10 Nov 2008 Obituary: French novelist who refused the Goncourt Published: 24 Dec 2007 Amélie Nothomb's victory in the Prix de Flore with her novel Ni d'Eve Ni d'Adam meets with controversy as her status as a "promising" rather than established author is questioned.

Published: 8 Nov 2007 Gilles Leroy takes the 2007 Goncourt prize; Daniel Pennac - not even shortlisted - wins the Renaudot. Published: 5 Nov 2007 Jonathan Littell, the American author who has become famous in France after winning the Prix Goncourt and an Académie Française prize, used his experiences dealing with murderers and torturers in war zones to create his fictional anti-hero. Published: 17 Nov 2006 Posthumous award for Auschwitz novel The Renaudot, one of France's most prestigious literary awards, has for the first time been given to a book published posthumously. The prize, which is second only to the Goncourt as France's top book award, was awarded on Monday to Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky, who died at Auschwitz in 1942. Published: 11:19 AM The Goncourt prize, France's most prestigious literary accolade, has been awarded to Laurent Gaudé for The Sun of the Scortas.

Published: 11:07 AM Robin Buss on the centenary of the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award Published: 13 Dec 2003 Letter from Paris: It might be 100 years old, but the Prix Goncourt is reviled, not revered - except by the winner Published: 1 Nov 2003 Diary: The Prix Goncourt steals a march on the Prix Femina and the Prix Médici Published: 31 Oct 2003 The Goncourt prize is just a measly 10 euros, plus a poet's maps and a problematic beard Published: 8 Nov 2002 The winner of France's most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt, would normally expect to sell some 500,000 copies and become a household name overnight. Pascal Quignard, critics say, will be lucky to shift a tenth as many. Published: 3 Nov 2002 France's top literary accolade, the Goncourt prize, was today awarded to Pascal Quignard for his novel Les Ombres errantes (The Wandering Shadows), a collection of aphorisms, memories and reflections on the past.

Published: 28 Oct 2002 The Goncourt prize, France's top literary accolade, has been awarded to Jean-Christophe Rufin for his novel Red Brazil. Published: 8 Nov 2001 Jean Echenoz won the Prix Goncourt with this mid-life crisis adventure story Published: 7 Apr 2001 Jean-Jacques Schuhl was only 50 francs (about £5) better off yesterday after winning France's top book award, the Prix Goncourt, for a difficult and experimental novel based on the life of his lover. Published: 30 Oct 2000 International writing What they're reading in France It will come as little surprise to cultural doom-mongers to find that Hannibal and The Beach are currently riding high on France's fiction bestseller lists, but happily, positions 1 and 3 are occupied by homegrown writers. Top place goes to Marc Lévy's ghostly love story Et Si C'était Vrai (If Only It Were True), which has been sold to 29 countries, is to be filmed by Steven Spielberg and will be published here by Fourth Estate in May.

At number 3, Jean Echenoz's Je M'en Vais (I'm On My Way) has just won the Prix Goncourt. Published: 9 Mar 2000 Goncourt Prize - definition of Goncourt Prize by The Free Dictionary Goncourt Prize - definition of Goncourt Prize by The Free Dictionary Also found in: Thesaurus , Wikipedia . Prix Goncourt n (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) an annual prize for a work of French fiction [C20: after the Académie Goncourt, which awards the prizes, founded by the will of Edmond Goncourt (1822–96), French writer] ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend: 1. Prix Goncourt - an award given annually for contributions to French literature accolade , honor , laurels , honour , award - a tangible symbol signifying approval or distinction; "an award for bravery" Want to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us , add a link to this page, or visit the webmaster's page for free fun content . Link to this page: laurels References in periodicals archive ?

Modiano won the Goncourt Prize for his 1978 novel, "Rue des Boutiques Obscures" ("Missing Person" in a 1980 English translation), about a private detective who loses his memory in the 1950s and tries to reconstruct it. Copyright © 2003-2017 Farlex, Inc Disclaimer All content on this website, including dictionary, thesaurus, literature, geography, and other reference data is for informational purposes only. This information should not be considered complete, up to date, and is not intended to be used in place of a visit, consultation, or advice of a legal, medical, or any other professional.

Question: What is the Prix Goncourt awarded for?
Answer: Literature