The OF Blog: May 2014

Saturday, May 31, 2014

2014 Grand Prix de l'imaginaire winners

The Grand Prix de l'imaginaire is the oldest French genre award still active.  Begun in 1974, it awards prizes in twelve categories, with these four likely being of most interest to readers here:  Best French Novel, Best Foreign Novel, Best French Short Fiction and Best Foreign Short Fiction.  The 2014 winners were recently announced (links to individual entries included in the copy/paste below):

1) Roman francophone

Lauréat : Anamnèse de Lady Star de L.L. Kloetzer (Denoël, Lunes d'Encre)
Chroniques des ombres de Pierre Bordage (Au Diable Vauvert)
Même pas mort de Jean-Philippe Jaworski (Les Moutons électriques)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Martyrs d'Oliver Peru (J'ai lu)
Le Chevalier de Pierre Pevel (Bragelonne)
L'Homme qui savait la langue des serpents

2) Roman étranger

22/11/63 de Stephen King (Albin Michel)
Qui a peur de la mort ? de Nnedi Okorafor (Panini, Éclipse)
Les Insulaires de Christopher Priest (Denoël, Lunes d'Encre)
Alif l'invisible de G. Willow Wilson (Buchet-Chastel)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Le Dernier loup-garou de Glen Duncan (Denoël, Lunes d'Encre)
Silo de Hugh Howey (Actes sud, Exofictions)
7 secondes pour devenir un aigle

3) Nouvelle francophone

Lauréat : 7 secondes pour devenir un aigle (recueil) de Thomas Day (Bélial')

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Complications

4) Nouvelle étrangère

Lauréat : Complications (recueil) de Nina Allan (Tristram)
Je suis la Reine (recueil) d'Anna Starobinets (Mirobole)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

La Petite déesse (recueil) de Ian McDonald (Denoël, Lunes d'Encre)
Animale

5) Roman jeunesse francophone

Hantés d'Anne Fakhouri (Rageot)
Cœurs de Rouille de Justine Niogret (Le Pré aux clercs)
La Fille-sortilège de Marie Pavlenko (Le Pré aux clercs)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Double ennemi de Claude Ecken (Armada)
Cantoria de Danielle Martinigol (L'Atalante)
Zoanthropes (tomes 1 & 2) de Matthias Rouage (Scrinéo)
Une planète dans la tête

6) Roman jeunesse étranger

Lauréat : Une Planète dans la tête de Sally Gardner (Gallimard Jeunesse)
Les Cités englouties de Paolo Bacigalupi (Au Diable vauvert)
Cinder de Marissa Meyer (Pocket Jeunesse)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

L'Odyssée des mondes de Ian McDonald (Gallimard Jeunesse)
Parallon (tomes 1 & 2) de Dee Shulman (Robert Laffont)
La 5e vague de Rick Yancey (Robert Laffont)
Bernard Sigaud

7) Prix Jacques Chambon de la traduction

Lauréat : Bernard Sigaud pour Complications (recueil) de Nina Allan (Tristram)
Michelle Charrier pour Le Dernier loup-garou de Glen Duncan (Denoël, Lunes d'Encre)
Laure Manceau & Yoann Gentric pour Silo de Hugh Howey (Actes sud, Exofictions)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Raphaëlle Pache pour Je suis la Reine (recueil) d'Anna Starobinets (Mirobole)
Anne-Sylvie Homassel pour Effroyabl ange1 de Iain M. Banks (L’Œil d’or)
Didier Graffet

8) Prix Wojtek Siudmak du graphisme

Joey Hi-Fi pour Qui a peur de la mort ? de Nnedi Okorafor (Panini, Éclipse)
Aurélien Police pour Bifrost n°72 (Bélial')

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Mathieu Lauffray pour Axis Mundi (CFSL Ink)
Souvenirs de l'empire de l'atome

9) BD / Comics

Aâma (tomes 1 à 3) de Frederik Peeters (Gallimard)
Urban (tome 1 & 2) de Luc Brunschwig et Roberto Ricci (Futuropolis)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Alisik (tome 1) de Humertus Rufledt et Helge Vogt (Le Lombard)
Chaos Team (tomes 1.1 et 1.2) de Vincent Brugeas et Ronan Toulhoat (Akileos)
Les Dormants de Jonathan Munoz (Cleopas)
L'Entrevue de Manuele Fior (Futuropolis)
Isabellae (tomes 1 & 2) de Gabor et Raule (Le Lombard)
La Voie du sabre (tome 1) de Federico Ferniani et Mathieu Mariolle (Glénat)
The Arms Peddler

10) Manga

Lauréat : The Arms Peddler (tomes 1 à 6) de Kyoichi Nanatsuki et Night Owl (Ki-oon)
Assassination Classroom (tomes 1 & 2) de Yusei Matsui (Kana)
Les Enfants de la mer (tomes 1 à 5) de Daisuke Igarashi (Sarbacane)
Mokke (tomes 1 à 3) de Takatoshi Kumakura (Pika)
Scumbag Loser (tomes 1 & 2) de Mikoto Yamaguchi (Ki-oon)
Terra Formars (tomes 1 à 4) de Yu Sasuga et Kenichi Tachibana (Kazé)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

Antimagia (tomes 1 & 2) de Kyû Aika (Doki-Doki)
City Hall (tomes 1 à 4) de Rémy Guerin et Guillaume Lapeyre (Ankama)
Iris Zero (tomes 1 à 5) de Takana Hotaru et Chiki Piro (Doki-Doki)
Rex Fabula (tomes 1 à 3) de Kairi Fujiyama (Doki-Doki)
Spice & Wolf (tomes 1 à 8) de Juu AyakuraIsuna Hasekura et Keito Koume (Ototo)
Warlord (tomes 1 à 5) de Byung Jin Kim et Sung Jae Kim (Ki-oon)
Souvenirs du futur

11) Essai

Lauréat : Souvenirs du futur. Les Miroirs de la Maison d'Ailleurs sous la direction de Marc Atallah,Frédéric Jaccaud et Francis Valéry (Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes)
La revue en ligne Res Futurae
Le Savant fou sous la direction de Hélène Machinal (Presses Universitaires de Rennes)


AnkamaBragelonne

12) Prix spécial

Lauréat : L'édition synchrone de L'Intégrale Stefan Wul chez Bragelonne et des Univers de Stefan Wul chez Ankama, adaptations des romans en BD par D. Cassegrain, M. Hawthorne, D. Lapiere, J.-D. Morvan, M. Reynes, O. Vatine, Yann...
Odyssées, l'Intégrale des nouvelles de Arthur C. Clarke (Bragelonne)

Autres titres retenus en première sélection :

L'Intégrale d'Imaro de Charles R. Saunders (Mnémos)

Friday, May 30, 2014

Graphic, non-English, Marxist, Poetic Book Porn

The Serbian editions for Danilo Kiš's Garden, Ashes and Milorad Pavić's Dictionary of the Khazars

Latin translation of The Hobbit and Tolkien's prose translation of Beowulf

Two verse translations of Beowulf, by E.M. Liuzza and Frederick Rebsamen

Two Prix Goncourt winners:  Jonathan Littell, Les Bienveillantes (available in English as The Kindly Ones) and Laurent Gaudé's Le Soleil des Scorta (The House of Scorta)

Cameroonese writer Patrice Nganang's Temps de chien (Dog Days in English) and the German edition of Thomas Mann's Tonio Kröger and Mario und der Zauberer (Mario and the Magician)

Nick Mamatas, Love is the Law and the Library of America edition of three books by Thornton Wilder

The first two volumes, in English translation, of Joann Sfar's The Rabbi's Cat

In addition, here are listings of recent e-books that I've bought in May:

Emma Donoghue, Frog Music

David James Poissant, The Heaven of Animals

Rivka Galchen, American Innovations

Rene Denfeld, The Enchanted

Ahmadou Kourouma, Allah is not Obliged

Smith Henderson, Fourth of July Creek

Porochista Khakpour, The Last Illusion

Felix Gilman, The Revolutions

Roland Dorgelès, Les Croix de bois

John-Antoine Nau, Force ennemie

Émile Moselly, Terres Lorraines

Marc Elder, Le Peuple de la Mer

Pierre Lemaitre, Au revoir là-haut

Alexis Jenni, L'art français de la guerre

Pascal Quignard, Les Ombres errantes

Gilles Leroy, Alabama Song

Atiq Rahimi, Syngué sabour:  Pierre de patience

Jean Echenoz, Je M'en Vais

Jean Echenoz, 14

Giorgio Pressburger, Storia Umana e Inumana

Francesco Pecoraro, La vita in tempo di pace

Antonio Scurati, Il padre infedele

Umberto Eco, Come si fa una tesi di Laurea

Marco Magini, Come fossi solo

Elisa Ruotolo, Ovunque, proteggici

Donatella di Pietrantonio, Bella Mia

Edmundo Paz Soldán, Iris

Jeff VanderMeer, Aniquilación

Valter Hugo Mãe, O Filho do Mil Homens

José Luiz Passos, O sonâmbulo amador

Ana Luisa Amaral, Inversos

Daša Drndić, April u Berlinu

Herta Müller, La Bestia del Cor





Thursday, May 29, 2014

Ben Marcus, Leaving the Sea

It is difficult for me to put in words what exactly it is about Ben Marcus's stories that appeal to me.  At first, I want to say it is the weirdness of many of his settings, but that is too vague and liable to be misconstrued.  Perhaps it is the family dynamics in several of his tales.  Certainly, passages like this one, from the first story of his latest collection, Leaving the Sea, "What Have You Done?", do contain a sharp, incisive wit:

In the car they didn't ask him about his trip and he didn't volunteer.  His sister and Rick whispered and cuddled and seemed to try to inseminate each other facially in the backseat while his father steered the car onto the expressway.  Alicia and Rick had their whole married lives to exchange fluids and language, but for some reason they'd needed to wait until Paul was there to demonstrate how clandestine and porno they were.  They had big secrets – as securely employed adults very well might.  Plus they wanted Paul to know that they were vibrantly glistening sexual human beings, even in their late thirties, when most people's genitals turn dark and small, like shrunken heads, and airport trip be damned, because they couldn't just turn off their desire at will. 
Alone they probably hated each other, Paul thought.  Masturbating in separate rooms, then reading in bed together on his-and-hers Kindles.  Ignoring the middle-aged fumes steaming under the duvet.  Just another marriage burning through its eleventh year.  What's the anniversary stone for eleven years of marriage?  A pebble?
As well executed as "What Have You Done?" is in terms of exploring family dynamics and hidden secrets, Leaving the Sea is not a monolithic collection that continuously strums three chords AC/DC-style.  There are variations on theme, such as that introduced in the beginning of the second story, "I Can Say Many Nice Things":

A welcome packet, the literary genre most likely to succeed in the new millennium.  Why not read about a community you don't belong to, that doesn't actually exit, a captain and crew who are, in reality, if that isn't too much of a downer on your vacation, as indifferent to each other as the coworkers at an office or bank?  Read doctored personal statements from underpaid crew members – because ocean life pays better than money! – who hate their lives but have been forced to buy into the mythology of working on a boat, not a goddamned ship, separated now from loved ones and friends, growing lonelier by the second, even while they wait on you and follow your every order. 
And yet, when Fleming thought about it, this welcome packet, fucked up though it was, even though he hadn't read it, most certainly had more readers than he did.  More people, for sure, read this welcome packet than had ever read any of his books or stories.  This welcome packet commanded a bigger audience, had more draw, appealed to more people, and, the kicker, understood its cherished readers better than he ever would with his sober, sentimental inventions of domestic lives he'd never lived, unless that was too flattering a description of the literary product he willed onto the page with less and less conviction every time he sat down at his laptop.
Certainly there is an air of self-reflection and cynical loathing present, but there also is the sense of a narrator who is blinded to many facets of reality and yet presumes at times to believe that he is self-aware.  This is not a cheery tale, but certainly it is a penetrating one that forces its readers to consider certain things about their own attitudes toward life and their perceptions of the people around them.

However, there is still more to Leaving the Sea.  In the second section (out of three), the first tale, "On Not Growing Up," differs in its structure (presented as a fictional Q&A session) and in its inversion of societal beliefs.  This line taken from it particularly appeals to me:

My ethics?  I'd like to shed the strictures of adulthood and make maturity an optional result of a freely lived human life, not the necessary path to power and success, lorded over by depressed, overweight, unimaginative corpses.
Yet despite how many pithy quotes I can find in Leaving the Sea and no matter how many references to families, dysfunctional relationships, and to failed careers, this collection is not defined solely by Marcus's excellent treatment of those themes.  No, his prose sparkles throughout, almost never ringing a false note.  The various characters that people his stories, while they have certain features in common, never feel stale or redundant.  Leaving the Sea is one of those rare collections in which readers can detect faint echoes of previous stories, but these echoes do not drown out the interesting things Marcus achieves in each individual tale.  This is certainly one of the better story collections that I have read this year.  Highly recommended.



Wednesday, May 28, 2014

World Cup of Fiction Preview: Group B

Click here for description of the 2014 groupings and the Group A preview.

Like Group A, the Group B countries contain a mixture of young and established literary traditions.  Yet with the possible exception of Spain, this group is perhaps more evenly matched than the first group, as there are not as many standouts for any of the participant countries.  In saying this, I am not alluding to actual literary quality or output as much as I am to international exposure, especially in the Anglophone nations.  Certainly there are several critically and popularly-acclaimed writers from these countries, some of which have received recent international acclaim, and in a matchup of individual writers, there is a very real chance of a national literary upset.

Australia 

The Socceroos have long been overshadowed by their larger, older Anglo-American kin, but those who are tempted to look at Australia's relative sparse population density and conclude that this young nation has not produced many world-class fiction writers over the past century will find themselves greatly mistaken.  Writers such as the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Patrick White, two-time Booker Prize winner Peter Carey, Colleen McCullough, and Nevil Shute (whose On the Beach was a staple of many Anglo-American school reading lists during the Cold War) certainly make Australia a literary power worthy of respect.  However, the Australian side might be a bit weak when it comes to poetry or to the lack of visible aboriginal or immigrant writing voices.

Chile

La Roja may be less familiar to football/literary enthusiasts than the other "roja" in Group B, but lately there have been some excellent Chilean writers who have made literary waves outside South America.  The most visible of these young writers, Roberto Bolaño, spent most of his adult life living outside Chile, but certainly his writing has struck a chord with writers who grew up during the days of Pinochet's rule.  Alberto Fuguet, whether one considers him as a writer or a film writer, certainly has been an influential Latin American voice over the past twenty years.  But before Fuguet helped co-found the McOndo anthology/erstwhile literary movement, Chile had produced several outstanding poets:  Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, and Nicanor Parra being just the most visible of a century-spanning crop of talented poets.  If the outcomes were based on poetry comparisons, then Chile might be a slight favorite in the majority of the contests.

The Netherlands 

The Clockwork Orange may not have been the host country for Anthony Burgess's famous novel of that name, but certainly the Dutch have developed a reputation in recent years for precise yet harrowing literature.  Although long overshadowed by their Teutonic neighbors, the Dutch literary side have produced a trio of recent literary stars, Harry Mulisch, Tommy Wieringa, and Gerbrand Bakker, the latter of whom won an IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.  Despite the talents of these three novelists, the Dutch are not as well-known in international circles for their prose or their poetry, so they likely will be the underdogs in any literary matchup.

Spain

La Furia Roja, the Red Fury, certainly has a catchy ring to it.  The defending FIFA World Cup Champions certainly can field a very solid, wide-ranging literary side as well.  Whether one prefers medieval epic poems like Mio Cid or early modern masterworks like Cervantes's Don Quijote or Lope de Vega's poetry and plays, or perhaps the early 20th century writer Miguel Unamuno, a member of the "Generation of '98," or more recently, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Spanish literature is rich in its diverse forms and interesting authorial personalities.  Yet with the exception of Zafón, few Spanish writers have managed to make a literary splash in the early 21st century (I leave Bolaño out of this, as although he had Spanish residency for nearly two decades before his death, he was as much a Chilean as a Spanish immigrant), so if the literary comparisons were to switch to the past decade's production, the Spanish literary side might be at a disadvantage.  However, when the entire national literary output is considered, Spain might be the slight literary favorite out of this group.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

A quote from Tolkien's translation of Beowulf

I've been reading J.R.R. Tolkien's just-published prose translation of Beowulf for the past few days, alternating between that and the bilingual verse translation done by Seamus Heaney.  While I recognize that Tolkien's prose translation was more of a "working notes" edition that perhaps could have been polished a bit more (and sadly, a direct verse translation, incomplete as it was, was not included in this book), there certainly are passages that have charmed me, such as this one:

The flame flashed forth, light there blazed within, even as of heaven radiantly shines the candle of the sky.  He gazed about that house, then turning went along the wall, grasping upraised that hard weapon by the hilt, in ire undaunted the knight of Hygelac.  That blade the warrior bold did not despise; nay, he thought now swiftly to requite Grendel for those many dire assaults that he had made upon the Western Danes, far oftener than that one last time, slaying in slumber the companions of Hrothgar's hearth, devouring as they slept fifteen of the people of the Danes, and others as many bearing forth away, a plunder hideous.  For that he had given him his reward, that champion in his wrath, so that on his couch he saw now Grendel lying weary of war, bereft of life, such hurt had he erewhile in battle got at Heorot.  Far asunder sprang the corpse, when Grendel in death endured a stroke of hard sword fiercely swung; his head was cloven from him. (pp. 58-59)
For comparison's sake, here's Heaney's verse translation of the same part:

A light appeared and the place brightened
the way the sky does when heaven's candle
is shining clearly.  He inspected the vault:
with sword held high, its hilt raised
to guard and threaten, Hygelac's thane
scouted by the wall in Grendel's wake.
Now the weapon was to prove its worth.
The warrior determined to take revenge
for every gross act Grendel had committed –
and not only for that one occasion
when he'd come to slaughter the sleeping troops,
fifteen of Hrothgar's house-guards
surprised on their benches and ruthlessly devoured,
and as many again carried away,
a brutal plunder.  Beowulf in his fury
now settled that score:  he saw the monster
in his resting place, war-weary and wrecked,
a lifeless corpse, a casualty
of the battle in Heorot.  The body gaped
at the stroke dealt to it after death:
Beowulf cut the corpse's head off.
(lines 1570-1590, p. 109)
I'll leave it up to you to decide which version appeals to you most.


Monday, May 26, 2014

I confess: I really know little and understand even less

Saw an interesting New York Times article linked today on Facebook.  Entitled "Faking Cultural Literacy," it deals with issues related to "real-time, real news" cycles in which people are inundated with events, expecting to form opinions even when "real" information is scarce or even nonexistent.  Although I do not agree 100% with its points, I am at least sympathetic with them, as they do strike close to the heart of some musings that I have had over the past several weeks.  What I think I've concluded, at least for know, is that I really know little and understand even less.

This may sound like a counter-intuitive thesis, considering that as an occasional reviewer and teacher, I might be expected to know something about which I fold forth.  However, the older I've become and the more experiences I've had with people from all walks of life (or is it just several walks of life, with several multitudes awaiting to be discovered or, worse, ignored?), the more I've become convinced that I too easily become convinced sometime.  Maybe it's jumping to a conclusion and making comments that hurt another, before hearing their side or learning new information that would lead me to disown those previously-made comments and assumptions.  Or maybe I want to believe in something just hard enough that "evidence" is shifted to support that stance without any further consideration.

Regardless of how it happens, what too frequently happens is that I convince myself that my knowledge and my opinions matter.  To whom it matters is irrelevant.  I am a "decider," someone who proclaims his thoughts on literary genres, politicians, social movements, justice, prejudices, sports teams, and favorite squirrels.  But do I really know anything about what I say?

I am beginning to think "no," that I really don't.  I see evidence of this in listening to others talk about things in ways that I didn't even fathom beforehand.  I see it in my struggles to articulate opinions.  I see it in those moments where it is better to just be silent and to consider what is unfolding around me.  So yes, considering the hugeness of human knowledge and dialogues, I really do know little and understand even less.

But that doesn't mean that I can try harder to understand something or another just a little bit more.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Here are the first three paragraphs to a new book. Would these captivate you?

I just started reading Porochista Khakpour's recently-released second novel (and one based on Persian legend), The Last Illusion, when I read these first three paragraphs:

Exactly once upon a time in a small village in northern Iran, a child of the wrong color was born. 
Khanoom (the Persian word for "lady," what everyone knew his mother as) was forty-seven when she gave birth to the boy.  He was the last child of eight, his closest sibling nineteen years older and all grown.  He had been a mistake from the beginning – sex being Khanoom's least visited whim – a cursed gift from her husband as he lay on his deathbed. 
Nobody imagined a dying man could produce the seed of another child, and yet.  But a child like that, sure – there should have been a cautionary tale about it, a proverb at the very least.  When Khanoom had him, months after her husband was dead, she looked at that sick yellow-white thing in her arms, and the only thing that made sense was to blame the child's problems on the diseased seed.  This tiny silently crying baby – his crying made no sound, which made her suspect he was mute – was clearly not well, having come from a half most unwell.  His hair and skin were the color of – no use to sugarcoat it, Khanoom would snap – piss.  He was something so unlike them, unlike all of nature.  It made her miss her dead husband less, the memory of that final hard explosive orgasm she recalled – an ejaculation that she imagined like a hot toxic pus, a poison that would have spawned an even more unthinkable demon, had it not been for Khanoom's own khanoomly egg.  It gave Khanoom nightmares to hold the boy even, no matter what the cousins and neighbors who visited said, trying their best to make the best of it.
Knowing beforehand that this is a modern take on a millennia-old Persian poem on a legendary fighter, what struck me was Khakpour's use of digressions to stretch out the "problem" of her newborn son, as it made me more curious about the events leading up to his untimely birth than I otherwise would have been if she had written this in a more straightforward fashion.

Way too early to tell if The Last Illusion will live up to the promise of its blurb (I had singled this out for future purchase back in January due to a brief description on The Millions), but it certainly is off to a promising start.  But what about you?  Would this sort of writing appeal to you or would it leave you feeling indifferent or even disinclined to read it?

Saturday, May 24, 2014

List of Prix Goncourt winners

Since I'm working on my French reading comprehension, I thought I'd add a list of Prix Goncourt winners here so I can keep track of those winning books that I do end up reading over the next several weeks, months, and years.  Bolded titles for ones read, italics for those bought but not yet read, and plain text for those not yet read/bought.  Due to the way I copy/pasted the only non-hypertext list I could find, the titles come second, followed by the author's name.

1903Force ennemieJohn-Antoine Nau
1904La MaternelleLéon Frapié
1905Les CivilisésClaude Farrère
1906Dingley, l’illustre écrivainJérôme and Jean Tharaud
1907Terres lorrainesEmile Moselly
1908Ecrit sur l’eauFrancis de Miomandre
1909En FranceMarius-Ary Leblond
1910De Goupil à MargotLouis Pergaud
1911Monsieur des LourdinesAlphonse de Chateaubriant
1912Les Filles de la pluieAndré Savignon
1913Le Peuple de la merMarc Elder
1914L’Appel du solAdrien Bertrand
1915GaspardRené Benjamin
1916Le FeuHenri Barbusse
1917La Flamme au poingHenri Malherbe
1918CivilisationGeorges Duhamel
1919A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurMarcel Proust
1920NeneErnest Pérochon
1921BatoualaRené Maran
1922Le Vitriol de la lune;
Le Martyre de l’obèse
Henri Béraud
1923Rabevel; ou, le mal des ardentsLucien Fabre
1924Le Chèvrefeuille; Le Purgatoire; Le Chapitre treize d’AthénéeThierry Sandre
1925RaboliotMaurice Genevoix
1926Le Supplice de PhèdreHenry Deberly
1927Jérôme, 60° latitude nordMaurice Bedel
1928Un Homme se penche sur son passéMaurice Constantin-Weyer
1929L’OrdreMarcel Arland
1930MalaisieHenri Fauconnier
1931Mal d’amourJean Fayard
1932Les LoupsGuy Mazeline
1933La Condition humaineAndré Malraux
1934Capitaine ConanRoger Vercel
1935Sang et lumièresJoseph Peyré
1936L’Empreinte de DieuMaxence van der Meersch
1937Faux passeportsCharles Plisnier
1938L’AraigneHenri Troyat
1939Les Enfants gâtésPhilippe Hériat
1940Les Grandes VacancesFrancis Ambrière
1941Vent de MarsHenri Pourrat
1942Pareil à des enfantsBernard Marc
1943Passage de l’hommeMarius Grout
1944Le Premier Accroc coûte 200 francsElsa Triolet
1945Mon village à l’heure allemandeJean-Louis Bory
1946Histoire d’un fait diversJean-Jacques Gautier
1947Les Forêts de la nuitJean-Louis Curtis
1948Les Grandes FamillesMaurice Druon
1949Week-end à ZuydcooteRobert Merle
1950Les Jeux sauvagesPaul Colin
1951Le Rivage des SyrtesJulien Gracq (declined)
1952Léon Morin, prêtreBéatrice Beck
1953Les Bêtes; Le Temps des mortsPierre Gascar
1954MandarinsSimone de Beauvoir
1955Les Eaux mêléesRoger Ikor
1956Les Racines du cielRomain Gary
1957La LoiRoger Vailland
1958Saint Germain; ou, la négociationFrancis Walder
1959Le Dernier des justesAndré Schwartz-Bart
1960Dieu est né en exilVintila Horia
1961La Pitié de DieuJean Cau
1962Les Bagages de sableAnna Langfus
1963Quand la mer se retireArmand Lanoux
1964L’État sauvageGeorges Conchon
1965L’AdorationJacques Borel
1966Oublier PalermeEdmonde Charles-Roux
1967La MargeAndré Pieyre de Mandiargues
1968Les Fruits de l’hiverBernard Clavel
1969CreezyFélicien Marceau
1970Le Roi des AulnesMichel Tournier
1971Les BêtisesJacques Laurent
1972L’Épervier de MaheuxJean Carrière
1973L’OgreJacques Chessex
1974La DentellièrePascal Lainé
1975La Vie devant soiEmile Ajar (declined)
1976Les FlamboyantsPatrick Grainville
1977John l’enferDidier Decoin
1978Rue des boutiques obscuresPatrick Modiano
1979Pélagie-la-charretteAntonine Maillet
1980Le Jardin d’acclimatationYves Navarre
1981Anne MarieLucien Bodard
1982Dans la main de l’angeDominique Fernandez
1983Les ÉgarésFrédérick Tristan
1984L’AmantMarguerite Duras
1985Les Noces barbaresYann Queffélec
1986Valet de nuitMichel Host
1987La Nuit sacrée (read in English)Tahar Ben Jelloun
1988L’Exposition colonialeErik Orsenna
1989Un Grand Pas vers le Bon DieuJean Vautrin
1990Les Champs d’honneurJean Rouaud
1991Les Filles du calvairePierre Combescot
1992TexacoPatrick Chamoiseau
1993La Rocher de TaniosAmin Maalouf
1994Un Aller simpleDidier van Cauwelaert
1995Le Testament françaisAndreï Makine
1996Le Chasseur zéroPascale Roze
1997La BataillePatrick Rambaud
1998Confidence pour confidencePaule Constant
1999Je m’en vaisJean Echenoz
2000Ingrid CavenJean-Jacques Schuhl
2001Rouge BrésilJean-Christophe Rufin
2002Les Ombres errantesPascal Quignard
2003La Maîtresse de BrechtJacques-Pierre Amette
2004Le Soleil des ScortaLaurent Gaudé
2005Trois jours chez ma mèreFrançois Weyergans
2006Les Bienveillantes (read in English)Jonathan Littell
2007Alabama SongGilles Leroy
2008Syngué sabour: pierre de patienceAtiq Rahimi
2009Trois femmes puissantes (also read in English)Marie NDiaye
2010La Carte et le territoire (read in English)Michel Houellebecq
2011L’Art français de la guerreAlexis Jenni
2012Le Sermon sur la chute de RomeJérôme Ferrari
2013Au revoir là-hautPierre Lemaitre
 
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