Despite its small payout -- all of € 10 -- the prix Goncourt is the most prestigious French book prize, and they've now announced the fifteen-title-strong longlist.
(Unlike most literary prizes, the Goncourt actually has three rounds before announcing a winner -- long-, middle-, and short-list, if you will.)
The Goncourt can (or should -- Romain Gary proved otherwise, by submitting a title under another name) only be won once -- hence books by previous winners, such as Houellebecq's Submission, were not eligible.
The one big name/title whose omission surprises most this year is HHhH-author Laurent Binet, whose La septième fonction du langage -- Barthes' death re-imagined as murder-mystery (among other things) -- didn't make the cut; Le Figaro sums up the generally very positive media-reactions to it as "c'est Feydeau chez les «sex-addicts» !"; see also the Grasset publicity page.
Quite a few of the authors with titles on the longlist have had books translated into English, including Mathias Enard (e.g. Zone), Jean Hatzfeld (e.g. Machete Season), Hédi Kaddour (Little Grey Lies), Simon Liberati (Anthology of Apparitions), Alain Mabanckou (Broken Glass), Boualem Sansal (The German Mujahid), and Delphine de Vigan (Underground Time).
The most ... intriguing titles seem to be Liberati's Eva, which I wrote about at some length a month ago (and a copy of which I now have; I hope to get to it soon), and Sansal's Orwellian 2084 (subtitle: La fin du monde); see the Gallimard publicity page.
(The Sansal and the Binet I expect we'll see in English soon (i.e. two or three years); the Liberati ... I'm not so sure, but given the French enthusiasm so far we may well, too.)
The Goncourt can (or should -- Romain Gary proved otherwise, by submitting a title under another name) only be won once -- hence books by previous winners, such as Houellebecq's Submission, were not eligible.
The one big name/title whose omission surprises most this year is HHhH-author Laurent Binet, whose La septième fonction du langage -- Barthes' death re-imagined as murder-mystery (among other things) -- didn't make the cut; Le Figaro sums up the generally very positive media-reactions to it as "c'est Feydeau chez les «sex-addicts» !"; see also the Grasset publicity page.
Quite a few of the authors with titles on the longlist have had books translated into English, including Mathias Enard (e.g. Zone), Jean Hatzfeld (e.g. Machete Season), Hédi Kaddour (Little Grey Lies), Simon Liberati (Anthology of Apparitions), Alain Mabanckou (Broken Glass), Boualem Sansal (The German Mujahid), and Delphine de Vigan (Underground Time).
The most ... intriguing titles seem to be Liberati's Eva, which I wrote about at some length a month ago (and a copy of which I now have; I hope to get to it soon), and Sansal's Orwellian 2084 (subtitle: La fin du monde); see the Gallimard publicity page.
(The Sansal and the Binet I expect we'll see in English soon (i.e. two or three years); the Liberati ... I'm not so sure, but given the French enthusiasm so far we may well, too.)