American Library in Paris Book Award was created in 2013 with a donation from the Florence Gould Foundation. It is awarded each November with a remunerative prize of $5,000 to "a work written originally in English that deepens and stimulates our understanding of France or the French.."
The American Library in Paris "was founded and originally run by American expatriates in Paris in 1920, with books that had been sent by American libraries to soldiers fighting in World War I."
Honorees
2013
The shortlist was announced in September, and the winner in December 2013.
Winner:
Fredrik Logevall
Fredrik Logevall is a Swedish-American historian and educator at Harvard University, where he is the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and professor of history in the Harvard Facult ...
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically d ...
Marilyn Yalom
Marilyn Yalom (March 10, 1932 – November 20, 2019) was a feminist author and historian. She was a senior scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, and a professor of French. She served as the institute's dire ...
, ''How the French Invented Love''
Jury:
Diane Johnson
Diane Johnson (born Diane Lain, April 28, 1934), is an American novelist and essayist whose satirical novels often feature American heroines living abroad in contemporary France. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her novel ''Persian ...
,
Adam Gopnik
Adam Gopnik (born August 24, 1956) is an American writer and essayist. He is best known as a staff writer for ''The New Yorker,'' to which he has contributed non-fiction, fiction, memoir, and criticism since 1986.
He is the author of nine books ...
and
Julian Barnes
Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946) is an English writer. He won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 with '' The Sense of an Ending'', having been shortlisted three times previously with '' Flaubert's Parrot'', ''England, England'', and '' A ...
2014
The shortlist was announced in July, and the winner in November 2014.
Winner: Robert Harris, ''
An Officer and a Spy
''An Officer and a Spy'' is a 2013 historical fiction thriller by the English writer and journalist Robert Harris. It tells the true story of the French officer Georges Picquart from 1896 to 1906, as he struggles to expose the truth about the ...
''
Shortlist:
*Jonathan Beckman, ''How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette, the Stolen Diamonds and the Scandal that Shook the French Throne''
*Frederick Brown, ''The Embrace of Unreason: France 1914 - 1940''
*
Sean B. Carroll
Sean B. Carroll (born September 17, 1960) is an American Evolutionary developmental biology, evolutionary developmental biologist, author, educator and executive producer. He is a distinguished university professor at the University of Marylan ...
, ''Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize''
*Philip Dwyer, ''Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power 1799 - 1815''
*
Francine Prose
Francine Prose (born April 1, 1947) is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and critic. She is a visiting professor of literature at Bard College, and was formerly president of PEN American Center.
Life and career
Born in Brookl ...
, ''Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932''
Jury: Alice Kaplan,
Sebastian Faulks
Sebastian Charles Faulks (born 20 April 1953) is a British novelist, journalist and broadcaster. He is best known for his historical novels set in France – ''The Girl at the Lion d'Or'', '' Birdsong'' and '' Charlotte Gray''. He has also pub ...
, and
Pierre Assouline
Pierre Assouline (born 17 April 1953) is a French writer and journalist. He was born in Casablanca, Morocco to a Jewish family. He has published several novels and biographies, and also contributes articles for the print media and broadcasts for ...
2015
The shortlist was announced in July, and the winner was announced 6 November 2015.
Winner: Laura Auricchio, ''The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered''
Shortlist:
* Nancy L. Green, ''The Other Americans in Paris: Businessmen, Countesses, Wayward Youth 1880-1941''
* Richard C. Keller, ''Fatal Isolation: The Devastating Paris Heat Wave of 2003''
* Sue Roe, ''In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse, and Modernism in Paris, 1900-1910''
* Ronald Rosbottom, ''When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation 1940-1944''
Jury: Laura Furman,
Lily Tuck
Lily Tuck (born October 10, 1938) is an American novelist and short story writer whose novel ''The News from Paraguay'' won the 2004 National Book Award for Fiction.Fredrik Logevall
Fredrik Logevall is a Swedish-American historian and educator at Harvard University, where he is the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and professor of history in the Harvard Facult ...
2016
The shortlist was announced in July, and the winner was announced on 3 November 2016.
Winner: Ethan B. Katz, ''The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France''
Shortlist:
* Jo Baker, ''A Country Road, A Tree''
*
Sarah Bakewell
Sarah Bakewell (born 1963) is a British author and professor. She currently lives in London. She received the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in Non-Fiction.
Early life
Bakewell was born in the seaside town of Bournemouth, England, where h ...
The shortlist was announced in July, and the winner was announced on 3 November 2017.
Winner:
David Bellos
David Bellos (born 1945) is an English-born translator and biographer. Bellos is Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University in the United States. He was director of Princeton ...
, ''The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of'' Les Misérables
Shortlist:
* David McAninch, ''Duck Season: Eating, Drinking, and Other Misadventures in Gascony, France's Last Best Place''
*
Adam Gidwitz
Adam Gidwitz (born February 14, 1982) is the author of the best selling children's books ''A Tale Dark and Grimm'' (2010), ''In a Glass Grimmly'' (2012), and ''The Grimm Conclusion'' (2013), all published by Dutton Books for Young Readers, an im ...
, ''The Inquisitor's Tale: or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog''
* Ross King, ''Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies''
*
Nadja Spiegelman
Nadja Spiegelman (born May 13, 1987) is an American writer and cartoonist. She is the author of articles, books, and graphic novels, as well as a literary magazine editor.
Early life, family and education
Nadja Spiegelman is the daughter of car ...
, ''I'm Supposed to Protect You From All This: A Memoir''
* Susan Rubin Suleiman, ''The Némirovksy Question: The Life, Death, and Legacy of a Jewish Writer in Twentieth-Century France''
Jury:
Adam Gopnik
Adam Gopnik (born August 24, 1956) is an American writer and essayist. He is best known as a staff writer for ''The New Yorker,'' to which he has contributed non-fiction, fiction, memoir, and criticism since 1986.
He is the author of nine books ...
The shortlist was announced in July, and the winner was announced on 8 November 2018.
Winner: Julian Jackson, ''A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle''
Shortlist
*
Adam Begley
Adam C. Begley (born 1959 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American freelance writer, and was the books editor for ''The New York Observer'' from 1996 to 2009.
Begley is the son of Sally (Higginson) and novelist Louis Begley. He graduated from Harv ...
, ''The Great Nadar: The Man Behind the Camera''
*
Bijan Omrani
Bijan Omrani is a British historian, journalist, teacher, barrister and author of Persian descent. His work ranges from Classical scholarship to current affairs across Asia.
Early life and education
Omrani was born in York, England, in 1979. H ...
, ''Caesar’s Footprints: A Cultural Excursion to Ancient France: Journeys Through Roman Gaul''
*
Rupert Thomson
Rupert Thomson, FRSL (born November 5, 1955) is an English writer. He is the author of thirteen critically acclaimed novels and an award-winning memoir. He has lived in many cities around the world, including Athens, Berlin, New York, Sydney, ...
, ''Never Anyone But You''
* Caroline Weber, ''Proust’s Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siècle Paris''
Jury:
Diane Johnson
Diane Johnson (born Diane Lain, April 28, 1934), is an American novelist and essayist whose satirical novels often feature American heroines living abroad in contemporary France. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her novel ''Persian ...
,
David Bellos
David Bellos (born 1945) is an English-born translator and biographer. Bellos is Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University in the United States. He was director of Princeton ...
, and
Pierre Assouline
Pierre Assouline (born 17 April 1953) is a French writer and journalist. He was born in Casablanca, Morocco to a Jewish family. He has published several novels and biographies, and also contributes articles for the print media and broadcasts for ...
2019
The shortlist was announced in July, and the winner was announced on 7 November 2019.
Winner: Marc Weitzmann, ''Hate: The Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism in France'' (and What it Means for Us)
Shortlist
* Edward Carey, ''Little: A Novel''
*Andrew S. Curran, ''Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely''
* David Elliott, ''Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc''
*Stéphane Hénaut and Jeni Mitchell, ''A Bite-Sized History of France: Gastronomic Tales of Revolution, War, and Enlightenment''
*
Julie Orringer
Julie Orringer (born June 12, 1973) is an American writer and lecturer. She attended Cornell University and the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. She was born in Miami, Florida and now lives in Brooklyn with ...
, ''The Flight Portfolio: A Novel''
Jury: Alice Kaplan,
Thomas Chatterton Williams
Thomas Chatterton Williams (born March 26, 1981) is an American cultural critic and author.Pamela Druckerman
Pamela Druckerman is an American-French writer and journalist living in Paris, France. In fall 2013, she became a contributing opinion writer for ''The New York Times International Edition''.
Education and early life
Pamela Druckerman grew up in ...
''Coups de coeur''
In addition to the six shortlisted titles, the screening committee selected the following five books as worthy of special recognition:
Mark Braude ''The Invisible Emperor: Napoleon on Elba from Exile to Escape''
*
Peter Caddick-Adams
Peter Caddick-Adams TD, VR, FRHistS, FRGS (born 1960) is a British academic historian, author and broadcaster who specializes in military history. He is known for books on 20th-century warfare, television work, and battlefield tours.
Backgro ...
, ''Sand and Steel: The D-Day Invasion and the Liberation of France'' Christopher L. Miller ''Impostors: Literary Hoaxes and Cultural Authenticity'' Whitney Scharer ''The Age of Light: A Novel''
* Christopher Tilghman, ''Thomas and Beal in the Midi''
2020
The shortlist was announced in July, and the winner was announced on 14 January 2021.
Winner: Maggie Paxson, ''The Plateau''
Shortlist
*
Bill Buford
Bill Buford (born 1954) is an American author and journalist. Buford is the author of the books ''Among the Thugs'' and ''Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscan ...
, ''Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking''
* James Gardner, ''The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum''
* Caitlin Horrocks, ''The Vexations: A Novel''
* Rachel Mesch, ''Before Trans: Three Gender Stories from Nineteenth-Century France''
*
Maurice Samuels
Maurice Samuels (born August 9, 1968) is the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French at Yale University. He graduated with a BA ('' summa cum laude'') in 1990 from Harvard University, where he also earned his MA (1995) and PhD (2000). Before moving ...
, ''The Betrayal of the Duchess: The Scandal That Unmade the Bourbon Monarchy and Made France Modern''
Jury: Ethan Katz, Rachel Donadio, and Jake Lamar
2021
The shortlist was announced in July 2021 , and the winner was announced on 20 January 2022.
Winner: Sudhir Hazareesingh, ''Black Spartacus:'' ''The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture''
Shortlist
* Michaela Carter, ''Leonora in the Morning Light''
*
Edmund de Waal
Edmund Arthur Lowndes de Waal, (born 10 September 1964) is a contemporary English artist, master potter and author. He is known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels often created in response to collections and archives or th ...
, ''Letters to Camondo''
* Emma Rothschild, An ''Infinite History: The Story of a Family in France over Three Centuries''
*
Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley (born September 26, 1949) is an American novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for her novel ''A Thousand Acres'' (1991).
Biography
Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a s ...
, ''Perestroika in Paris''
Jury:
Lauren Collins
Lauren Felice Collins (born August 29, 1986) is a Canadian actress, best known for portraying Paige Michalchuk on '' Degrassi: The Next Generation''. She has also had supporting roles in the films '' Take the Lead'' (2006) and ''Charlie Bartlett ...
The shortlist was announced in July 2022, and the winner was announced on 3 November 2022.
Winner:
Graham Robb
Graham Macdonald Robb FRSL (born 2 June 1958, Manchester) is a British author and critic specialising in French literature.
Biography
Born at Manchester, Robb attended the Royal Grammar School, Worcester, before going up to Exeter College, ...
, ''France: An Adventure History''
Shortlist
* Amanda Bestor-Siegal, ''The Caretakers, A Novel''
*
Maud Casey
Maud Casey is an American novelist, and professor of creative writing at University of Maryland, College Park.
Life
She is the daughter of novelist John Casey.
She graduated from University of Arizona with an M.F.A.
She won a Guggenheim Fello ...