Prix Goncourt

Goncourt 2025 · Shortlist

Kolkhoz

Kolkhoze

Emmanuel Carrère · 68 when first published

Nonfiction · 416 pages · Family, Historical, Politics

AIAI-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

Jacaranda

Gaël Faye · 42 when first published

Novel · 272 pages · Family, War

AIAI-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 Before the Dawn

Madelaine avant l'aube

Sandrine Collette · 54 when first published

Novel · 247 pages · Family

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

Sad Tiger

Triste tigre

Neige Sinno · 46 when first published

Nonfiction · 288 pages · Autofiction, Family

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

The Wizard of the Kremlin

Le Mage du Kremlin

Giuliano da Empoli · 49 when first published

Novel · 304 pages · Politics

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

Milwaukee Blues

Milwaukee Blues

Louis-Philippe Dalembert · 59 when first published

Novel · 260 pages · Politics

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

Theseus, His New Life

Thésée, sa vie nouvelle

Camille de Toledo · 44 when first published

Novel · 304 pages · Family

AIAI-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

The Impatient

Les Impatientes

Djaïli Amadou Amal · 45 when first published

Novel · 176 pages · Family

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

Thirst

Soif

Amélie Nothomb · 53 when first published

Novel · 96 pages · Historical

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

At Night All Blood Is Black

Frère d'âme

David Diop · 52 when first published

Novel · 160 pages · War, Historical

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

The Art of Losing

L'Art de perdre

Alice Zeniter · 31 when first published

Novel · 400 pages · Family, Migration, Historical

AIAI-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

Bakhita

Véronique Olmi · 55 when first published

Novel · 384 pages · Historical

AIAI-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

Hold Fast Your Crown

Tiens ferme ta couronne

Yannick Haenel · 50 when first published

Novel · 336 pages · Satire

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

Small Country

Petit Pays

Gaël Faye · 34 when first published

Novel · 192 pages · Coming of age, War

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

The Influence Peddlers

Les Prépondérants

Hédi Kaddour · 70 when first published

Novel · 344 pages · Historical, Politics

AIAI-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

A Land Like You

Ce pays qui te ressemble

Tobie Nathan · 67 when first published

Novel · 352 pages · Historical, Politics

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

Charlotte

Charlotte

David Foenkinos · 40 when first published

Novel · 217 pages · Historical, War

AIAI-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

The Meursault Investigation

Meursault, contre-enquête

Kamel Daoud · 44 when first published

Novel · 160 pages · Politics

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

Naked

Nue

Jean-Philippe Toussaint · 56 when first published

Novel · 124 pages · Love · Marie Madeleine Marguerite de Montalte, book 4

AIAI-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

The Age of Reinvention

L'Invention de nos vies

Karine Tuil · 41 when first published

Novel · 399 pages · Love, Politics

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair

La Vérité sur l'affaire Harry Quebert

Joël Dicker · 27 when first published

Novel · 656 pages · Crime

AIAI-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

Plague and Cholera

Peste & Choléra

Patrick Deville · 55 when first published

Novel · 292 pages · Historical

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

The Castle of Whispers

Du domaine des Murmures

Carole Martinez · 45 when first published

Novel · 192 pages · Historical

AIAI-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

Return to Killybegs

Retour à Killybegs

Sorj Chalandon · 59 when first published

Novel · 276 pages · Politics, War

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants

Parle-leur de batailles, de rois et d'éléphants

Mathias Énard · 38 when first published

Novel · 144 pages · Historical

AIAI-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

Birth of a Bridge

Naissance d'un pont

Maylis de Kerangal · 43 when first published

Novel · 249 pages · Nature

AIAI-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 Baby

Apocalypse bébé

Virginie Despentes · 41 when first published

Novel · 342 pages · Crime, Satire

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

Underground Time

Les Heures souterraines

Delphine de Vigan · 43 when first published

Novel · 299 pages

AIAI-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

The Truth about Marie

La Vérité sur Marie

Jean-Philippe Toussaint · 52 when first published

Novel · 160 pages · Love · Marie Madeleine Marguerite de Montalte, book 3

AIAI-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

The Wound

Des hommes

Laurent Mauvignier · 42 when first published

Novel · 242 pages · War

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

Where Tigers Are at Home

Là où les tigres sont chez eux

Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès · 54 when first published

Novel · 750 pages · Historical

AIAI-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

The Red Sofa

Le Canapé rouge

Michèle Lesbre · 68 when first published

Novel · 118 pages · Love

AIAI-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

Brodeck

Le Rapport de Brodeck

Philippe Claudel · 45 when first published

Novel · 313 pages · War, Historical

AIAI-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 · Shortlist

Marilyn's Last Sessions

Marilyn dernières séances

Michel Schneider · 62 when first published

Novel · 416 pages · Historical

AIAI-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

Running Away

Fuir

Jean-Philippe Toussaint · 48 when first published

Novel · 156 pages · Love · Marie Madeleine Marguerite de Montalte, book 2

AIAI-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

The Possibility of an Island

La Possibilité d'une île

Michel Houellebecq · 49 when first published

Novel · 345 pages · Speculative, Satire

AIAI-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

Cliffs

Falaises

Olivier Adam · 31 when first published

Novel · 147 pages · Family

AIAI-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 2001 · Shortlist

Repetition

La Reprise

Alain Robbe-Grillet · 79 when first published

Novel · 178 pages · Crime

AIAI-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.