The Goncourt prize and Prix Renaudot winners have been announced (via the Guardian):

In the year when the literary world turned to France, with the award of the Nobel prize for literature to JMG le Cl?zio, Paris has returned the compliment, awarding two of the biggest prizes of the French literary calendar to writers born in Afghanistan and Guinea.

Atiq Rahimi has won the 2008 Goncourt prize with his fourth novel, Syngu? sabour (Patience Stone), his first to be written directly in French rather than the Persian he spoke during his childhood in Afghanistan, while the Prix Renaudot has been taken by Tierno Mon?nembo for Le roi de Kahel (The King of Kahel). More.

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