2026-03-30
50 分钟This is The Guardian.
Welcome to The Guardian Long Read, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture,
politics, and new thinking.
For the text version of this and all our long reads, go to theguardian. com forward slash long read.
And decide on the best novel of the year.
The ceremony is stayed, traditional, down to the restaurant's menu,
full of classic dishes such as valavance and foie gras on toast.
In pictures of the judging ceremony, the judges wear dark suits.
Each has four glasses of wine at hand.
The winner of the Goncourt, as the prize is called, is likely to enter the pantheon of world literature,
joining a lineage of writers that includes Marcel Proust and Simone de Beauvoir.
The prize is also a financial boon for authors.
As the biggest award in French literature, the Goncourt means a prime spot in storefronts, foreign rights, prestige.
By one estimate, winning the Goncourt means nearly 1 million euros of sales in the weeks that follow.
In November 2024, the Académie Goncourt gave the prize to a novel by Camel Daoud,
a celebrated Algerian writer living in France.
His victory came at a tense moment for France and its former colony.
The relationship, never an easy one, had been strained by the Algerian state's increasing political repression of its people
and French involvement in the dispute between Algeria and Morocco over Western Sahara.
France has sided with Morocco, which claims sovereignty over the territory.