The Prestigious 2025 Literary Prizes Are Known

Wednesday, November 5, 2025 — The season of major autumn literary prizes has delivered its verdict. Three major figures in Francophone literature have been honored this year by the juries of the Goncourt, Femina, and Médicis prizes: Laurent Mauvignier, Nathacha Appanah, and Emmanuel Carrère. Intense works, marked by memory, lineage, intimate pain, and the silences of History, thus dominate a literary season characterized by emotion and reflection. Laurent Mauvignier, Goncourt Prize 2025 for “La Maison vide” The 2025 Goncourt Prize, awarded at Drouant restaurant in Paris, goes to Laurent Mauvignier for La Maison vide (éditions de Minuit). Elected in the first round of voting, the author explores over 700 pages the buried silences and traumas of a family across four generations. Born in Tours in 1967, the son of a factory worker and a cleaning lady, Mauvignier has built a sensitive body of work, marked by the unsaid, memory, and transmission. In this visceral novel, he traces back to World War II, evoking a grandmother shorn at the Liberation and a father broken by this past. The author, moved during the award ceremony, stated: “It’s an enormous reward, because it’s a book that comes from childhood and from several generations.” His demanding style, both stripped-down and poetic, earns him recognition as one of the great stylists of his generation. After Des hommes (2009) and Histoires de la nuit (2020), La Maison vide confirms a major work centered on family and collective memory. Nathacha Appanah, Femina Prize for La Nuit au cœur The 2025 Femina Prize was awarded to Nathacha Appanah for La Nuit au cœur (Gallimard), a poignant narrative where the author blends her own story as a survivor with those of two women victims of femicide. Born in Mauritius in 1973, the Franco-Mauritian novelist here leaves pure fiction for an intimate and committed dive into violence against women. By alternating personal memories and real facts, she highlights the invisible traumas and resilience of survivors. “This is my twelfth book and my first major prize,” she confided, moved, after the Femina announcement. The writer, already acclaimed for Tropique de la violence (2016), confirms with La Nuit au cœur her literary commitment against social injustices and patriarchal domination. She thus inscribes her work in the continuity of writing about memory, pain, and reparation. Emmanuel Carrère, Médicis Prize for Kolkhoze The 2025 Médicis Prize goes to Emmanuel Carrère for Kolkhoze (P.O.L), an ambitious narrative blending the intimate and History, where the author traces his Russian and Georgian roots. One day after Mauvignier's Goncourt, the jury chaired by Pascale Roze rewarded an equally family-focused novel, but rooted in another universe: that of post-revolutionary Russia and exile. Across four generations, Carrère explores the transmission of wounds, family unspoken truths, and political legacies. Son of the famous historian Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, the author of L’Adversaire (2000) and Yoga (2020) continues his quest for the real and the sensitive here. His writing, between fiction and documentary, oscillates between autobiography and a perspective on the world. This 2025 edition of literary prizes highlights a common theme: family, origins, and the transmission of intimate wounds. Whether it's the legacy of silence in Mauvignier, the fight for women's voices in Appanah, or exilic memory in Carrère, the juries have praised works where the intimate meets the collective. Alongside these three major laureates, Yanick Lahens won the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française for Passagères de nuit (Sabine Wespieser), and Laura Vazquez won the Prix Décembre for Les Forces (Sous-sol). Each autumn, these distinctions reaffirm the vitality and diversity of Francophone literature. While the Goncourt remains the most prestigious, the Femina and Médicis confirm their role as discoverers of strong, demanding, and humanist writings. Between introspection, commitment, and memory, the 2025 literary vintage stands out as one of the most moving and powerful of the decade, offering the public works that question history, society, and the human soul.