Last week, you read about the famous French literary prize Le Prix Goncourt and its winner for 2017: Eric Vuillard for L’Ordre du jour. But that’s not the only Prix Goncourt that was recently awarded. In fact, there’s another, prestigious Goncourt prize, whose finalists were just revealed today.

Courtesy of Pixabay

Le Prix Goncourt des Lycéens is often described as the “younger sibling” of the older Prix Goncourt. It was created in 1987 and its name (Le Prix Goncourt des Lycéens literally means “The High School Students’ Goncourt Prize”) gives a bit away about how its winner is selected.

L’Académie Goncourt, the same jury that selects the winner of the Goncourt, also selects twelve to fifteen novels to nominate for Le Prix Goncourt des Lycéens. But that’s all that this jury does for the reward. Instead of jury members selecting a winner, the selection process is turned over to…(you guessed it!)…high school students! After the nominations, these twelve books are released to 2,000 high school students, who must read the books and participate in discussions and debates about them.  Eventually, these high school students will pick the winner of this award. And, in fact, Le Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, is not just an interesting award with an interesting selection process. In fact, it is Le Prix Goncourt des Lycéens that often increases sales of the winner the most. Past winners of this price, have seen their novels become the top-selling books in France.

Just today, the four finalists of the prize were announced. They are: Véronique Olmi for Bakhita, Alice Zeniter for L’Art de perdre (The Art of Losing), Brigitte Giraud for Un loup pour l’homme (A Wolf for a Man), and Monica Sabolo for Summer. You may have noticed that all of these nominated authors are women. This has been remarked upon repeatedly in the French news, as many have criticized Le Prix Goncourt in the past for typically nominating and awarding the prize to male authors.

The winner of this year’s prize will be awarded in Rennes tonight, so make sure to look for the announcement in the French news (it will be announced in Le Monde and other such newspapers tomorrow). But, if you don’t mind waiting, I’ll make sure to also make the announcement next week!