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I felt betrayed, naked. Did a prize-winning novelist steal a woman's life story?

By Madeline Schwartz, read by Kate Hanford.

Every November, leading figures of French literature gather in the upstairs room of an old-fashioned Paris restaurant 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 volvents 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 one million euros of sales in the

weeks that follow.

In November 2024, the Academy 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.

Algeria has supported independence movements there.

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