All prizes France
France · Since 1903 · For books in French
Awarded each autumn in Paris by the ten members of the Académie Goncourt to a work of imaginative prose written in French, by an author of any nationality.
Edmond de Goncourt left his estate to found the Académie Goncourt, which first awarded the prize in 1903. Its ten members are co-opted, serve for life and have met at the Drouant restaurant in Paris since 1914. Publishers send eligible novels to every member by early September. Between September and late October the Académie names three selections of 15, 8 and 4 books, and it picks the winner in early November by oral vote, in up to 14 rounds. The winner receives a symbolic cheque for 10 euros, but the prize brings large print runs and sales. An author can normally win only once; Romain Gary won a second time in 1975 under the name Émile Ajar. Winners include Marcel Proust, André Malraux, Simone de Beauvoir and Marguerite Duras. Since 2008 jurors may not be employed by a publisher.
Showing 60 of 96 books. 36 aren’t in English yet: show all.
Goncourt 2025 · Shortlist
Kolkhoze
Emmanuel Carrère · 68 when first published
Nonfiction · 416 pages · Family, Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:After his mother’s state funeral, a writer retraces four generations of his family: his father, a young bourgeois from Bordeaux, and his mother, a stateless émigrée who became France’s leading expert on Russia.
Goncourt 2024 · Shortlist
Jacaranda
Gaël Faye · 42 when first published
Novel · 272 pages · Family, War
AI-generated summary:Milan spends years trying to learn what lies hidden in the shade of the jacaranda tree loved by his friend Stella, in a Rwanda left silent after the genocide against the Tutsi.
Goncourt 2024 · Shortlist
Madelaine avant l'aube
Sandrine Collette · 54 when first published
Novel · 247 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:In a tiny hamlet where families have always worked land owned by others, a starving, untamed girl comes out of the forest one day and is taken in by the villagers.
Goncourt 2023 · Winner
Veiller sur elle
Jean-Baptiste Andrea · 52 when first published
Novel · 580 pages · Love, Historical
AI-generated summary:Mimo, born poor and apprenticed to a mediocre stone carver, has genius in his hands. Viola Orsini, heir to a great family, is too ambitious to accept her place. When they meet, they swear never to part.
Goncourt 2023 · Shortlist
Triste tigre
Neige Sinno · 46 when first published
Nonfiction · 288 pages · Autofiction, Family
AI-generated summary:A writer recounts how her stepfather raped her from the age of seven to fourteen, in a family living on the margins in the Alps in the 1990s, and asks whether such things can be told at all.
Also: National Book Award 2025 finalist
Goncourt 2022 · Winner
Vivre vite
Brigitte Giraud · 62 when first published
Novel · 176 pages · Autofiction
AI-generated summary:Twenty years after her husband was killed in a motorcycle accident in June 1999, a writer goes back over the days that led to it, from the purchase of a house to a chain of coincidences.
Goncourt 2022 · Shortlist
Le Mage du Kremlin
Giuliano da Empoli · 49 when first published
Novel · 304 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:One night Vadim Baranov, a former theatre director and reality-TV producer who became the éminence grise of the Russian leader known as the Tsar, tells his story to the narrator.
Goncourt 2021 · Winner
La Plus Secrète Mémoire des hommes
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr · 31 when first published
Novel · 496 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In Paris in 2018 a young Senegalese writer discovers a legendary 1938 novel whose author, once hailed as a “Black Rimbaud”, vanished after the scandal it caused, and sets out on his trail.
Goncourt 2021 · Shortlist
Milwaukee Blues
Louis-Philippe Dalembert · 59 when first published
Novel · 260 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:After a Black man is killed by a police officer in Milwaukee, those who knew him, from his primary school teacher to his college coach, recall Emmett, a boy from the ghetto once headed for football stardom.
Goncourt 2020 · Winner
L'Anomalie
Hervé Le Tellier · 63 when first published
Novel · 400 pages · Speculative
AI-generated summary:In June 2021 something inexplicable upends the lives of hundreds of passengers on a flight from Paris to New York, among them a contract killer, a Nigerian pop star, a lawyer and an obscure writer.
Goncourt 2020 · Shortlist
Thésée, sa vie nouvelle
Camille de Toledo · 44 when first published
Novel · 304 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:In 2012 Theseus leaves “the city of the West” with his children and three boxes of archives, taking the last night train east to escape the memory of his family.
Goncourt 2020 · Shortlist
Les Impatientes
Djaïli Amadou Amal · 45 when first published
Novel · 176 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:In the Sahel, young Ramla is torn from the man she loves and married to Safira’s husband, while her sister Hindou is forced to marry their cousin. All they are ever told is to be patient.
Goncourt 2019 · Winner
Tous les hommes n'habitent pas le monde de la même façon
Jean-Paul Dubois · 69 when first published
Novel · 240 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:Paul Hansen has spent two years in a Montreal prison, sharing a cell with a Hells Angel. Looking back, he remembers his life as the caretaker of a residence, and his partner Winona, a pilot.
Goncourt 2019 · Shortlist
Soif
Amélie Nothomb · 53 when first published
Novel · 96 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In the hours before his crucifixion, Jesus himself tells his Passion and reflects on what it means to be human and to live in a body.
Goncourt 2018 · Winner
Leurs enfants après eux
Nicolas Mathieu · 40 when first published
Novel · 432 pages · Coming of age, Politics
AI-generated summary:In August 1992, in a valley in eastern France where the blast furnaces have gone cold, fourteen-year-old Anthony and his cousin steal a canoe to cross the lake to the nudist beach.
Goncourt 2018 · Shortlist
Frère d'âme
David Diop · 52 when first published
Novel · 160 pages · War, Historical
AI-generated summary:On a morning in the First World War, Senegalese infantryman Alfa Ndiaye sees his childhood friend Mademba, closer than a brother, fall mortally wounded a few metres from their trench.
Also: International Booker 2021 winner
Goncourt 2017 · Winner
L'Ordre du jour
Éric Vuillard · 49 when first published
Nonfiction · 144 pages · Historical, Politics, War
AI-generated summary:On 20 February 1933, twenty-four of Germany’s leading industrialists are summoned by Göring to the Reichstag president’s palace and asked to fund the Nazi party before the coming elections.
Goncourt 2017 · Shortlist
L'Art de perdre
Alice Zeniter · 31 when first published
Novel · 400 pages · Family, Migration, Historical
AI-generated summary:Naïma, whose family comes from Algeria, sets out to learn the history her family never told her: why her grandfather Ali became a harki, and what her father lost when he came to France in 1962.
Also: Warwick Prize 2021 shortlist
Goncourt 2017 · Shortlist
Bakhita
Véronique Olmi · 55 when first published
Novel · 384 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Kidnapped at the age of seven from her village in Darfur, a girl endures the horrors of slavery until, as a teenager, she is bought by the Italian consul.
Goncourt 2017 · Shortlist
Tiens ferme ta couronne
Yannick Haenel · 50 when first published
Novel · 336 pages · Satire
AI-generated summary:A man has written a vast screenplay about Herman Melville that no producer wants. One day he obtains the phone number of the great American director Michael Cimino, who agrees to read it.
Goncourt 2016 · Winner
Chanson douce
Leïla Slimani · 35 when first published
Novel · 240 pages · Family, Crime
AI-generated summary:When Myriam, a mother of two young children in Paris, goes back to work at a law firm, she and her husband hire Louise, a nanny who quickly wins the children’s affection.
Goncourt 2016 · Shortlist
Petit Pays
Gaël Faye · 34 when first published
Novel · 192 pages · Coming of age, War
AI-generated summary:In 1992 ten-year-old Gabriel lives in a comfortable expatriate neighbourhood of Burundi with his French father, his Rwandan mother and his little sister, until history overtakes their small country.
Goncourt 2015 · Winner
Boussole
Mathias Énard · 43 when first published
Novel · 464 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Night falls on Vienna, where Franz Ritter, a musicologist in love with the Orient, cannot sleep and drifts through memories of his travels and of Sarah, the elusive woman he has always loved.
Also: International Booker 2017 shortlist
Goncourt 2015 · Shortlist
Les Prépondérants
Hédi Kaddour · 70 when first published
Novel · 344 pages · Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:In spring 1922 a Hollywood crew arrives to shoot a film in Nahbès, a small town in the Maghreb, sharpening the conflicts between local notables, French settlers and young nationalists.
Goncourt 2015 · Shortlist
Ce pays qui te ressemble
Tobie Nathan · 67 when first published
Novel · 352 pages · Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:In the Jewish ghetto of Cairo, against all odds, rebellious Zohar is born to a flamboyant young mother and a blind father; his milk sister Masreya, a dancer from the Delta, will lead him to the gates of power.
Goncourt 2014 · Winner
Pas pleurer
Lydie Salvayre · 68 when first published
Novel · 278 pages · War, Historical, Family
AI-generated summary:Two voices intertwine: that of Georges Bernanos, who denounces the Nationalist terror of the Spanish Civil War, and that of the narrator’s mother Montse, who remembers only the joyful days of the 1936 revolution.
Goncourt 2014 · Shortlist
Charlotte
David Foenkinos · 40 when first published
Novel · 217 pages · Historical, War
AI-generated summary:The life of Charlotte Salomon, a painter who grew up in Berlin, was gradually shut out of German society by the Nazis and fled to France, where she began an autobiographical body of paintings.
Goncourt 2014 · Shortlist
Meursault, contre-enquête
Kamel Daoud · 44 when first published
Novel · 160 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:Seventy years after the killing on the beach told in a famous twentieth-century novel, the brother of “the Arab” shot by Meursault gives the victim back his name, Moussa, and his story.
Goncourt 2013 · Winner
Au revoir là-haut
Pierre Lemaitre · 62 when first published
Novel · 448 pages · War, Historical, Crime
AI-generated summary:Survivors of the Great War, timid clerk Albert and flamboyant artist Édouard, his face shattered, find that France honours its dead and forgets its living, and dream up an audacious swindle.
Goncourt 2013 · Shortlist
Nue
Jean-Philippe Toussaint · 56 when first published
Novel · 124 pages · Love · Marie Madeleine Marguerite de Montalte, book 4
AI-generated summary:Marie, a haute couture designer and the narrator’s partner, closes her autumn-winter show with a model dressed only in honey, followed down the runway by a swarm of bees.
Goncourt 2013 · Shortlist
L'Invention de nos vies
Karine Tuil · 41 when first published
Novel · 399 pages · Love, Politics
AI-generated summary:Sam Tahar, a star lawyer in New York, built his success on a lie: he took the Jewish background of his best friend Samuel, a failed writer stuck in a tense French suburb. Twenty years on, they meet again.
Goncourt 2012 · Winner
Le Sermon sur la chute de Rome
Jérôme Ferrari · 44 when first published
Novel · 234 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:In a mountain village in Corsica, two young men from the area abandon their philosophy studies on the mainland to turn the local bar into “the best of all possible worlds”.
Goncourt 2012 · Shortlist
La Vérité sur l'affaire Harry Quebert
Joël Dicker · 27 when first published
Novel · 656 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:In 2008 a young New York novelist with writer’s block learns that his mentor, the famous writer Harry Quebert, is accused of murdering a fifteen-year-old girl in New Hampshire in 1975.
Goncourt 2012 · Shortlist
Peste & Choléra
Patrick Deville · 55 when first published
Novel · 292 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:The life of Alexandre Yersin, a Swiss-born disciple of Louis Pasteur who spent most of his life in Indochina, where he discovered the plague bacillus and pursued every kind of research.
Goncourt 2011 · Winner
L'Art français de la guerre
Alexis Jenni · 48 when first published
Novel · 633 pages · War, Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:A young man in a bad way meets Victorien Salagnon, a veteran of France’s colonial wars and perhaps the only painter in the colonial army. Salagnon teaches him to paint, and in return he writes his story.
Goncourt 2011 · Shortlist
Du domaine des Murmures
Carole Martinez · 45 when first published
Novel · 192 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:On her wedding day in 1187, young Esclarmonde refuses to say yes, determined to give herself to God against her father’s wishes, and is walled into a cell beside the castle chapel.
Goncourt 2011 · Shortlist
Retour à Killybegs
Sorj Chalandon · 59 when first published
Novel · 276 pages · Politics, War
AI-generated summary:In Killybegs at Christmas 2006, Tyrone Meehan, an IRA veteran whose betrayal has just been exposed, decides to tell the truth about how he became a traitor before others tell it for him.
Goncourt 2010 · Winner
La Carte et le Territoire
Michel Houellebecq · 54 when first published
Novel · 291 pages · Satire
AI-generated summary:Jed Martin, an artist who first became known for photographing Michelin road maps, finds worldwide success with portraits of people at work, among them a famous novelist.
Goncourt 2010 · Shortlist
Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants
Mathias Énard · 38 when first published
Novel · 144 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:On 13 May 1506 Michelangelo lands in Constantinople, defying Pope Julius II, to answer the sultan’s invitation to design a bridge over the Golden Horn.
Goncourt 2010 · Shortlist
Naissance d'un pont
Maylis de Kerangal · 43 when first published
Novel · 249 pages · Nature
AI-generated summary:The building of a suspension bridge somewhere in an imaginary California, told through the lives of a dozen men and women who work on the gigantic site.
Goncourt 2010 · Shortlist
Apocalypse bébé
Virginie Despentes · 41 when first published
Novel · 342 pages · Crime, Satire
AI-generated summary:Valentine, a lost teenager, has disappeared. Between Paris and Barcelona, the people who knew her cross paths, and it is not clear who is really looking for her.
Goncourt 2009 · Winner
Trois femmes puissantes
Marie NDiaye · 42 when first published
Novel · 304 pages · Family, Migration
AI-generated summary:Three stories of three women who say no. Norah, Fanta and Khady Demba each fight to keep their dignity against the humiliations that life inflicts on them.
Goncourt 2009 · Shortlist
Les Heures souterraines
Delphine de Vigan · 43 when first published
Novel · 299 pages
AI-generated summary:Mathilde and Thibault do not know each other. Two figures among millions in a city in constant motion, on one day in May they might meet, collide or simply pass each other by.
Goncourt 2009 · Shortlist
La Vérité sur Marie
Jean-Philippe Toussaint · 52 when first published
Novel · 160 pages · Love · Marie Madeleine Marguerite de Montalte, book 3
AI-generated summary:A couple has been apart for some months. Although both have new lives, each keeps the memories of the past and imagines the other in their own daily life and new encounters.
Goncourt 2009 · Shortlist
Des hommes
Laurent Mauvignier · 42 when first published
Novel · 242 pages · War
AI-generated summary:Called up to fight in Algeria in 1960, Bernard, Février, Rabut and others came home two years later and kept silent. Forty years on, a birthday and a small gift bring the past back.
Goncourt 2008 · Winner
Syngué sabour. Pierre de patience
Atiq Rahimi · 46 when first published
Novel · 141 pages · War, Family
AI-generated summary:In a country at war much like Afghanistan, a woman watches over her husband, left in a coma by a bullet in the neck, and begins to tell him everything she has never dared to say.
Goncourt 2008 · Shortlist
Là où les tigres sont chez eux
Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès · 54 when first published
Novel · 750 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Eléazard von Wogau, a press correspondent in the far north-east of Brazil, is given the manuscript of an unpublished biography of the Baroque Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher.
Goncourt 2007 · Shortlist
Le Canapé rouge
Michèle Lesbre · 68 when first published
Novel · 118 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Without news of Gyl, a man she once loved, the narrator sets off after him on the Trans-Siberian, her thoughts returning to an old woman waiting for her on a red sofa in Paris.
Goncourt 2007 · Shortlist
Le Rapport de Brodeck
Philippe Claudel · 45 when first published
Novel · 313 pages · War, Historical
AI-generated summary:Back in his village after surviving a camp, Brodeck witnesses the villagers’ killing of a stranger, the Anderer, and is asked to write a report on what happened and why.
Goncourt 2006 · Winner
Les Bienveillantes
Jonathan Littell · 39 when first published
Novel · 983 pages · War, Historical
AI-generated summary:Long after the war, Max Aue, now director of a lace factory in northern France, writes down his path as an SS officer, from the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 to the fall of Berlin.
Goncourt 2006 · Shortlist
Marilyn dernières séances
Michel Schneider · 62 when first published
Novel · 416 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:The thirty months of analysis between Marilyn Monroe and her last psychoanalyst, Ralph Greenson, a famous Hollywood therapist, drawn from testimony and real events.
Goncourt 2005 · Shortlist
Fuir
Jean-Philippe Toussaint · 48 when first published
Novel · 156 pages · Love · Marie Madeleine Marguerite de Montalte, book 2
AI-generated summary:Given a mobile phone on the day he arrives in China, the narrator wonders whether he is being watched; on a night train between Shanghai and Beijing, his fear of the telephone takes on its full meaning.
Goncourt 2005 · Shortlist
La Possibilité d'une île
Michel Houellebecq · 49 when first published
Novel · 345 pages · Speculative, Satire
AI-generated summary:In a future where a sect promising immortality has replaced the old religions, its members leave their DNA and a life story before dying, to be cloned again every fifty years.
Goncourt 2005 · Shortlist
Falaises
Olivier Adam · 31 when first published
Novel · 147 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:On a hotel balcony in Étretat, a man looks out at the cliffs from which his mother threw herself twenty years earlier and, over one night, searches his memory for her.
Goncourt 2004 · Winner
Le Soleil des Scorta
Laurent Gaudé · 32 when first published
Novel · 289 pages · Family, Historical
AI-generated summary:Luciano Mascalzone, a petty thief, returns after fifteen years in prison to Montepuccio, a scorching village in Apulia, to claim the woman he has desired ever since he met her.
Goncourt 2003 · Winner
La Maîtresse de Brecht
Jacques-Pierre Amette · 60 when first published
Novel · 300 pages · Historical, Politics, Love
AI-generated summary:In 1948 Bertolt Brecht returns to Berlin after fifteen years in exile. He takes a young actress as his lover, unaware that she has been hired by the Stasi to report on his every move.
Goncourt 2002 · Winner
Les Ombres errantes
Pascal Quignard · 54 when first published
Nonfiction · 189 pages · Dernier royaume, book 1
AI-generated summary:The first volume of a series of reflections on wandering, the past and loss, mixing philosophical reasoning, aphorisms, fictional and real figures and places, history and personal impressions.
Goncourt 2001 · Winner
Rouge Brésil
Jean-Christophe Rufin · 49 when first published
Novel · 429 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:The conquest of Brazil seen through two children, Just and Colombe, who serve as interpreters with the native tribes, between European civilisation and the Indian world.
Goncourt 2001 · Shortlist
La Reprise
Alain Robbe-Grillet · 79 when first published
Novel · 178 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:HR, a minor agent of a French intelligence and special operations service, arrives in Berlin in 1949 on a mission whose true meaning has not been revealed to him.
Goncourt 2000 · Winner
Ingrid Caven
Jean-Jacques Schuhl · 59 when first published
Novel · 244 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:On Christmas Eve 1943, a four-year-old girl sings “Silent Night” for Hitler’s soldiers. Half a century later, now a famous singer and actress, she gives a short recital in Jerusalem.