Who to succeed the sublime novel The most secret memory of men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, awarded by the jury in 2021? Giuliano Da Empoli, Brigitte Giraud, Cloé Korman or Makenzy Orcel? Answer this Thursday, November 03!
In the meantime, we invite you to return to the very origins of this prize, before detailing the calendar, the main criteria and the methods of award.
A little history of the Goncourt Prize
First awarded in 1903, the Goncourt Prize was founded by La Société Littéraire des Goncourt. At the origin of this award, two brothers, Jules and Edmond de Goncourt, both passionate about literature and writers themselves. The main objective of this competition was to pay 10 authors so that they could live from their work.
Today, the Goncourt Prize is highly recognized and symbolic. The announcement of the winner makes a lot of noise in the media world every year. This is a real highlight of French literary life, which makes it a highly coveted prize. The winner of this prize sees his book sales reach peaks, and this until the Christmas period.
Allocation calendar
The Goncourt prize is awarded at the beginning of November after three pre-selection, in September and October, during which the jury defines for the first pre-selection 15 names, then eight names, then four names in the third round.
Award criteria
The winning work is considered “the best work of imagination in prose published in the year” by the Academicians. But before being rewarded, you have to be selected.
To be selected, the work must be a novel written in French and published by a French-speaking publisher with a distribution circuit in bookstores. The publisher “must send the work of fiction to each member of the jury before September 1 of the literary season concerned by the prize” details theAcademy. It should also be noted that the Goncourt Prize is awarded only once to the same writer.
Allocation method
It is the members of the Académie Goncourt who decide which book should be rewarded.
The Goncourt Academy is made up of 10 members, all volunteers and chosen by cooptation. Since 1914, these members, who must not be over 80 years old, meet every first Tuesday of September on the first floor of the Drouant restaurant, located in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris. These ten members meet in the “Salon Goncourt” behind closed doors and orally designate the name of the winner, after a vote which can reach fourteen rounds of deliberation.
©Petr Kovalenkov / Alamy / Abaca
Concretely, the names of the authors are put in a champagne bucket. In turn, these names are brought out and each member of the jury votes aloud to defend or not the writer in question. If an absolute majority is necessary for the first ten rounds, a relative majority is sufficient for the eleventh to thirteenth rounds to designate the winner. If the fourteenth and last round is reached, the president’s vote then counts double.
From these long discussions comes a winner, which will be communicated at the beginning of November around 12:45 p.m., in front of a crowd of journalists. Generally, all the finalists wait near the restaurant, so that they can arrive very quickly following the announcement of the winner.
However, things are a little different this year. Despite the absence of some jurors, the finalists were announced during the first edition of the Beirut Books festival in Lebanon, as a pledge of friendship and support for this country of French-speaking culture. The prize will be awarded in Paris, as tradition dictates.
Did you know ?
In 2015, the jurors went to Tunisia, to the Bardo museum where an attack left 22 dead, to announce the finalists.
A few anecdotes about the Goncourt Prize
- The winner receives a symbolic check for 10 euros
- On average, sales of the winners amounted to nearly 400,000 copies. Only exception: the book The Anomaly by Hervé le Tellier, which sold more than a million copies!
- Romain Gary is the only one to have received two Goncourt prizes, in 1956 for his novel The Roots of Heavenand in 1975 for his novel The life aheadsigned under the pseudonym of Émile Ajar.
- Since its creation, the prize has only been awarded to 12 novelists, including only 3 since the year 2000 (Marie NDiaye, Lydie Salvayre, Leila Slimani)
LR