Philippe Jaenada Goncourt Prize win for L’Inconnue du quai de Javel, Digi Mart USA News: French author Philippe Jaenada said he was at his publisher’s office when he learned he had won the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary award. He described the news as joyful and gratifying, noting that the past two days had brought dozens of messages from friends wishing him well.
Jaenada said he had been calm the previous week, telling himself that he would either win the prize or continue his life normally. As the announcement approached, however, he admitted to feeling artificially tense.
He compared the process to a horse race, a sport he enjoys, saying the public treats the event with growing weight and seriousness.
His thirteenth novel, L’Inconnue du quai de Javel, is an investigation into the death of a woman known by name but otherwise largely unknown. She is Louise Cansot, a young woman from Brittany who was killed on the quai de Javel in Paris in 1949.
Jaenada said that although the reader learns her identity early, she remains unknown to him in a deeper sense, since he cannot know her voice or the expression in her eyes.
The book, which runs more than 500 pages, is written as an investigation that Jaenada describes as almost journalistic. He said he was inspired by Georges Simenon’s Maigret series and read all 75 Maigret novels, using the detective’s reactions to different situations as a guide.
He also said his narrator is a clumsy, unlucky version of himself, a device meant to lighten the tragedy surrounding the young woman.
Jaenada said he thought of Louise Cansot and of the many young women of her era, and of today, who face injustice and constraints. He also recalled his first publisher, Bernard Barrault, who died earlier this year, and his final words to him: “Go toward your destiny.”
Asked about artificial intelligence, which has also been a topic of debate around the Goncourt, Jaenada said the technology should not be banned. He argued that it should be tamed and used as a tool that assists rather than replaces writers.
In the book he discusses using AI for research in limited ways, sometimes with humor, and said writers should appropriate it and remain honest about its use.
