The situation is serious, it has been four years since Gallimard won the Prix Goncourt, the august publisher having only won two Grails in the last ten years (with Hervé Le Tellier and Leïla Slimani), a meager haul compared to previous decades (37 crowns since 1903, including seven in the 1950s alone). That said, Seuil has only had one winner, Lydie Salvayre, and Grasset came up empty during the same decade. The era of Galligrasseuil, the “good old days”, dominated by these three learned houses and a few prize-makers, where one accumulated positions and functions (juror here, editor there), seems more or less over.
A priori, the first list of the Goncourt 2024, announced on September 3, seems very promising for Gallimard with its four authors, Kamel Daoud, Maylis de Kerangal (Verticales is a collection), Etienne Kern and Carole Martinez. But let’s not get carried away, there were five selected last year on the first list of the Goncourt with the result that we know.
As for Grasset, it has two novelists, Gaël Faye and Jean-Noël Orengo, while Seuil has no representatives (but is taking its revenge on the first selection of the December prize, worth 15,000 euros, with three distinguished authors, Aurélien Bellanger, Julia Deck and Hélène Giannecchini). Could salvation come from the Renaudot jury? No, not a Seuil in its plethora of 18 names, but four Gallimards and two Grassets, as well as numerous duplicates with their neighbors at Drouant – Daoud, Faye, Jaenada, Kern, Montaigu, Orengo and Norek (we will note the fine performance of this “new kid” of the literary rentrée).
If the battle is tough, it is because the Goncourt sells: thus from 2010 to 2022, on average and in large format, some 360,000 copies were sold, followed by the Goncourt des lycéens (around 315,000), the Renaudot (220,000), the Académie française (120,000) – and vice versa for the last two depending on the decade – and the Femina (95,000), the Interallié and the Médicis bringing up the rear. For those rejected from the second Goncourt list, which will be released on October 1, there will therefore remain at least one very nice consolation prize, the Goncourt des lycéens (without Gaël Faye and Carole Martinez, already winners). And for all, long sleepless nights. Welcome to the not-so-restful circle of grand prize winners!