Kamel Daoud grand prize winner of the Goncourt 2024 prize for “Houris” – Libération

The suspense has just ended at the Drouant restaurant in Paris: this Monday, November 4, Kamel Daoud was awarded the 2024 Goncourt Prize for Houris (Gallimard). The ten jurors, and their new president Philippe Claudel elected in May, decided. The predictions gave Kamel Daoud, therefore, and Gaël Faye (JacarandaGrasset) favorites, ahead of Hélène Gaudy (ArchipelagosL’Olivier) and Sandrine Collette (Madelaine before dawnLattès). Kamel Daoud succeeds Jean-Baptiste Andrea, rewarded last year for Watch over her (The Iconoclast), and to Brigitte Giraud, winner in 2022 with Live fast (Flammarion).

In this third novel, published ten years later Meursault, counter-investigation (Actes Sud, 2014) the Franco-Algerian author Kamel Daoud recounts the massacres of the Algerian “black decade” (1992-2002) through the eyes of Aube, the narrator. A Goncourt finalist in 2014, he won the first novel prize.

Renaudot for Gaël Faye

Gaël Faye, for his part, consoles himself with the Renaudot prize, awarded immediately. After the phenomenal success of Small Country (Grasset) eight years ago, 1.5 million Books sold and the Goncourt prize for high school students, Gaël Faye looks at the reconstruction of Rwanda after the 1994 genocide in Jacaranda (Grasset). Finalist at Goncourt in 2016, he then won the high school students' prize.

Beyond the symbolic check of 10 euros, Goncourt sells several hundred thousand copies. The Goncourt precedent, Watch over her holds the record for the number of sales among award-winning novels in 2023. The book sold 627,180 copies, or 200,000 more than le Mage du Kremlin by Giuliano da Empoli (Gallimard), laureate of the Roman of the French Academy. Rather a very good score for a Goncourt, even if it did not reach the figure of the Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier (winner in 2020), which has exceeded one million copies.