French writer Laurent Mauvignier received the Prix Goncourt 2025, the most prestigious literary award in France, for “La maison vide”, published by Éditions de Minuit, a sprawling 752-page family saga. The author, 58 years old, was awarded in the first round, beating the Belgian Caroline Lamarche for “Le bel obscur” (Seuil) and the other two novelists competing in the final selection: Emmanuel Carrère with “Kolkhoze” (POL, which will be translated by Adelphi in 2026), considered the favorite on the eve, and Nathacha Appanah with “La nuit au coeur” (Gallimard).
“In 1976, my father reopened the house he had received from his mother, which had been closed for twenty years”: this is how the novel “The empty house” opens, which in Italy will be published at the end of 2026 by Feltrinelli, who has already published Mauvignier’s books “Degli men” (2010), “Storia di un oblio” (2012), “Intorno al mondo” (2016) and “Continuare” (2018). Inside that house: a piano, a dresser with chipped marble, a Legion of Honour, photographs on which a face had been cut out with scissors. A house populated with stories, where two world wars meet, the rural life of the first half of the twentieth century, but also Marguerite, the author’s grandmother, his mother Marie-Ernestine, and all the men who gravitated around them. All of them have left their mark on the house and have been progressively erased. “I tried to bring them back to light to understand what their story might have been and the shadow it cast on ours”, explained the winner.
Laurent Mauvignier, who obtained six votes against Caroline Lamarche’s four, arrived to have lunch with the 10 jurors of the Académie Goncourt at the Drouant restaurant, a famous venue near the Paris Opéra, where the prize was announced. The ten jurors wore a badge in support of the Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, currently detained in his country. Awarded at the same time as the Goncourt, the Prix Renaudot was awarded to “Adélaïde” de Clermont-Tonnerre (Je voulais vivre). The Prix Renaudot for the essay instead went to Alfred de Montesquiou for “Le crépuscule des hommes” (Robert Laffont). (by Paolo Martini)