The Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book Prize) is a French
literary prize
A literary award or literary prize is an award presented in recognition of a particularly lauded literary piece or body of work. It is normally presented to an author. Organizations
Most literary awards come with a corresponding award ceremony. Man ...
created in 1948. It is awarded yearly in two categories: Novel and Essay for books translated into French.
Prix du Meilleur livre étranger — Novel
*2022: Juan Gabriel Vásquez, for ''Volver la vista atrás'' as ''Une rétrospective'' (Le Seuil)
*2021: Guzel Yakhina, for ''Дети мои'' as ''Les enfants de la Volga'' (Noir sur Blanc).
*2020: Colum McCann, for ''
Apeirogon
In geometry, an apeirogon () or infinite polygon is a polygon with an infinite number of sides. Apeirogons are the rank 2 case of infinite polytopes. In some literature, the term "apeirogon" may refer only to the regular apeirogon, with an in ...
H is for Hawk
''H is for Hawk'' is a 2014 memoir by British author Helen Macdonald. It won the Samuel Johnson Prize and Costa Book of the Year award, among other honours.
Content
''H is for Hawk'' tells Macdonald's story of the year they spent training a E ...
'' as ''M pour Mabel'' (Fleuve éditions)
* 2015:
Martin Amis
Sir Martin Louis Amis (25 August 1949 – 19 May 2023) was an English novelist, essayist, memoirist, screenwriter and critic. He is best known for his novels ''Money'' (1984) and '' London Fields'' (1989). He received the James Tait Black Mem ...
, for '' The Zone of Interest'' as ''La Zone d'intérêt'' (Calmann-Lévy)
* 2014: Drago Jancar, for ''To noč sem jo viel'' (''I Saw Her That Night'') as ''Cette nuit, je l’ai vue'' ( Éditions Phébus)
* 2013:
Alan Hollinghurst
Sir Alan James Hollinghurst (born 26 May 1954) is an English novelist, poet, short story writer and translator. He won the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award and the 1994 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2004, he won the Booker Prize for his novel ...
, for ''
The Stranger's Child
''The Stranger's Child'' is the fifth novel by Alan Hollinghurst, first published in June 2011. The book tells the story of a minor poet, Cecil Valance, who is killed in the First World War. In 1913, he visits a Cambridge friend, George Sawle, ...
'' as ''L'Enfant de l'étranger'' (Albin Michel)
* 2012: A. B. Yehoshua, for ''The Retrospective'' as ''Rétrospective''
* 2011: Alessandro Piperno, for ''Persecuzione. Il fuoco amico dei ricordi'' as ''Persécution''
* 2010: Gonçalo M. Tavares, for ''Aprender a Rezar na Era da Técnica'' (''Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique''), as ''Apprendre à prier à l’ère de la technique'', Viviane Hamy
*2009: Karel Schoeman for ''Hierdie Lewe'' (''This Life''), as ''Cette vie'', Phébus, Paris
*2008: Charles Lewinsky, for '' Melnitz''
*2007: Joseph McBride, for '' Searching for John Ford'' (as ''À la recherche de John Ford'')
*2006:
Nicole Krauss
Nicole Krauss (born August 18, 1974) is an American author best known for her four novels '' Man Walks into a Room'' (2002), '' The History of Love'' (2005), '' Great House'' (2010) and '' Forest Dark'' (2017), which have been translated into ...
Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín ( , ; born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet.
His first novel, ''The South (novel), The South'', was published in 1990. ''The Blackwater Lightship'' was short ...
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (; 25 September 1964 – 19 June 2020) was a Spanish novelist known for his 2001 novel ''La sombra del viento'' ('' The Shadow of the Wind''). The novel sold 15 million copies and was winner of numerous awards; it was included ...
True History of the Kelly Gang
''True History of the Kelly Gang'' is a novel by Australian writer Peter Carey, based loosely on the history of the Kelly Gang. It was first published in Brisbane by the University of Queensland Press in 2000. It won the 2001 Booker Prize a ...
'' (as ''La Véritable Histoire du gang Kelly'')
*2002:
Orhan Pamuk
Ferit Orhan Pamuk (born 7 June 1952; ) is a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic, and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. One of Turkey's most prominent novelists, he has sold over 13 million books in 63 languages, making him ...
, for '' My Name is Red'' (as ''Mon nom est Rouge'')
*2001: Per Olov Enquist, for ''The Visit of the Royal Physician'' (as ''Le Médecin personnel du roi'')
*2000:
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth (; March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophical ...
Péter Nádas
Péter Nádas (born 14 October 1942) is a Hungarian writer, playwright, and essayist.
Biography
He was born in Budapest into a Jewish family, the son of László Nádas (originally Nussbaum) and Klára Tauber. After the takeover of the Hung ...
Graham Swift
Graham Colin Swift FRSL (born 4 May 1949) is a British people, British writer. Born in London, UK, he was educated at Dulwich College, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York.
Career
Some of Swift's books have been filmed ...
, for ''Ever After'' (as ''À tout jamais'')
*1992:
Jane Urquhart
Jane Urquhart, LL.D (born June 21, 1949) is a Canadian novelist and poet. She is the internationally acclaimed author of seven award-winning novels, three books of poetry and numerous short stories. As a novelist, Urquhart is well known for her e ...
The Things They Carried
''The Things They Carried'' (1990) is a collection of linked short stories by American novelist Tim O'Brien, about a platoon of American soldiers fighting on the ground in the Vietnam War. His third book about the war, it is based upon his ex ...
Salman Rushdie
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie ( ; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British and American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern wor ...
, for ''
Shame
Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion often associated with negative self-evaluation; motivation to quit; and feelings of pain, exposure, distrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness.
Definition
Shame is a discrete, basic emotion, d ...
'' as ''La Honte''
*1984:
Vasily Grossman
Vasily Semyonovich Grossman (; 12 December (29 November, Julian calendar) 1905 – 14 September 1964) was a Soviet writer and journalist. Born to a Jewish family in Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, Grossman trained as a chemical engine ...
for ''
Life and Fate
Life, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, growth, adaptation, respons ...
Dagon
Dagon or Dagan (; ) was a god worshipped in ancient Syria, across the middle of the Euphrates, with primary temples located in Tuttul and Terqa, though many attestations of his cult come from cities such as Mari and Emar as well. In settl ...
'' as ''Dagon le dieu-poisson''
*1969:
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José García Márquez (; 6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian writer and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo () or Gabito () throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th centur ...
, for ''
One Hundred Years of Solitude
''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' (, ) is a 1967 in literature, 1967 novel by Colombian people, Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that tells the Family saga, multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio ...
'' as ''Cent ans de solitude''
*1966: Peter Härtling, for ''Niembsch'' as ''Niembsch ou l'Immobilité''
*1965:
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tar ...
, for ''
The Centaur
''The Centaur'' is a novel by John Updike, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1963. It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Portions of the novel first appeared in ''Esquire'' and ''The New Yorker''.
Alejo Carpentier, for ''The Lost Steps''/''Los pasos perdidos'' as ''Le Partage des eaux'' (Galimard)
*1950:
Miguel Ángel Asturias
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (; 19 October 1899 – 9 June 1974) was a Guatemalan poet-diplomat, novelist, playwright and journalist. Winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1967, his work helped bring attention to the importance of i ...
Daniel Mendelsohn
Daniel Adam Mendelsohn (born 1960) is an American author, essayist, critic, columnist, and translator.
He is currently the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College, the Editor at Large of the '' New York Review of Books,'' ...
, for ''Trois anneaux. Un conte d’Exil'' (Flammarion)
*2019ː Wolframm Eilenberger, for ''Zeit der Zauberer'' as ''Le temps des magiciens'' (Albin Michel)
*2018: Stefano Massini, for ''Qualcosa sui Lehman'' as ''Les Frères Lehman'' (Éditions du Globe)
*2017: Philippe Sands, for ''East West Street. On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity'' as ''Retour à Lemberg'' (Albin Michel)
*2016: Samar Yazbek, for ''Bawwābaẗ arḍ al-ʿadam'' as ''Les Portes du néant'' (Stock)
*2015:
Christoph Ransmayr
Christoph Ransmayr (; born 20 March 1954) is an Austrian writer.
Life
Born in Wels, Upper Austria, Ransmayr grew up in Roitham near Gmunden and the Traunsee. From 1972 to 1978 he studied philosophy and ethnology in Vienna. He worked there as ...
Erwin Mortier
Erwin Mortier (born 28 November 1965) is a Dutch-language Belgian author. Spending his youth in Hansbeke, he later moved to nearby Ghent, where he became city poet (2005–2006).
He wrote as a columnist for newspapers like '' De Morgen'' and p ...
Marina Tsvetaeva
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva ( rus, Марина Ивановна Цветаева, p=mɐˈrʲinə ɪˈvanəvnə tsvʲɪˈta(j)ɪvə, links=yes; 31 August 1941) was a Russian poet. Her work is some of the most well-known in twentieth-century Russ ...
, for ''Récits et essais (tome 2)'' (Seuil)
*2010:
Antonia Fraser
Lady Antonia Margaret Caroline Fraser, (; born 27 August 1932) is a British author of history, novels, biographies and detective fiction. She is the widow of the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Harold Pinter (1930–2008), and prior to h ...
, for ''Vous partez déjà ? Ma vie avec Harold Pinter''
*2009: Pascal Khoo Thwe, for ''Une odyssée birmane'' (Gallimard)
*2008: William T. Vollmann, for ''Pourquoi êtes-vous pauvres ?'' (Actes Sud).
*2006:
Diane Middlebrook
Diane Helen Middlebrook ( Wood; April 16, 1939 – December 15, 2007) Cynthia Haven"Diane Middlebrook, professor emeritus and legendary biographer, dies at 68" ''Stanford Report'', December 15, 2007. was an American biographer, poet, and tea ...
, for ''Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath, histoire d'un mariage'' (Phébus)
*2005: Mikhail Shishkin, for ''Dans les pas de Byron et Tolstoï'' (Noir sur Blanc)
*2004:
Azar Nafisi
Azar Nafisi (; born 1948)Following eighth grade, Nafisi's parents sent her to England for schooling from 1961 to 1963. Nafisi 2010, chapter 8, pp. 69-70; chapter 13, p. 115 is an Iranian-American writer and professor of English literature. Born in ...
, for ''Lire Lolita à Téhéran'' (Plon)
*2003: Hella S. Haasse, for ''La Récalcitrante'' (Seuil)
*1999: W. G. Sebald, for ''Les Anneaux de Saturne'' (Actes Sud)
*1998: Verena von der Heyden-Rynsch, for ''Écrire la vie, trois siècles de journaux intimes féminins''
*1996:
Michael Holroyd
Sir Michael de Courcy Fraser Holroyd (born 27 August 1935) is an English biographer.
Early life and education
Holroyd was born in London, the son of Basil de Courcy Fraser Holroyd (a descendant of Sir George Sowley Holroyd, Justice of the King ...
, for ''Carrington'' (Flammarion)
*1993: Predrag Matvejević, for "Bréviaire Méditerranéen" (Fayard)
*1977: Mario Praz, for ''La Chair, la mort et le diable'' (Denoël)
*1974: Abram Tertz (=
Andrei Sinyavsky
Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky (; 8 October 1925 – 25 February 1997) was a Russian writer and Soviet dissident known as a defendant in the Sinyavsky–Daniel trial of 1965.
Sinyavsky was a literary critic for ''Novy Mir'' and wrote works critic ...
), for ''Une voix dans le chœur'' (Seuil)
*1966: Jerzy Kosinski, for ''L'Oiseau bariolé''
*1965:
John Cowper Powys
John Cowper Powys ( ; 8 October 187217 June 1963) was an English novelist, philosopher, lecturer, critic and poet born in Shirley, Derbyshire, where his father was vicar of the parish church in 1871–1879. Powys appeared with a volume of verse ...