The winner of the 2020 Prix Goncourt, the French equivalent to the Booker Prize or National Book Award, has been announced and it’s a genre novel. The novel in question is L’Anomalie (The Anomaly) by Hervé Le Tellier.

France 24’s article “Futuristic thriller wins top French literary award” synopsizes the plot:

… Tellier had been tipped for glory with a page-turner of a novel in which a hit man, a Nigerian pop star and a writer land in New York only to find that their flight — and other versions of their selves — had already arrived three months earlier.

The award is not a lucrative one, but it should pay off in future sales:

… While Tellier gets a paltry 10 euros ($12) in prize money, the award invariably catapults the winner to the top of the best-seller lists.

Deutsche Welle, in “Goncourt Prize goes to ‘Anomaly’ of a novel”

The book has been described as a “literary UFO” combining different genres, from science-fiction to crime novel, from comedy to romance. It’s “a popular adventure, a real page-turner, an imminent bestseller, but also an experimental, ultra-literary work,” wrote author Frédéric Beigbeder in a review for Le Figaro magazine.

The Prix Goncourt is awarded by the jury of the Academie Goncourt.

[Thanks to Cora Buhlert for the story.]