Announced in New Delhi after deliberations by Indian students, the selection places Nathacha Appanah’s novel at the centre of this year’s Goncourt Choice of India, with Priya Paul, Chairperson of Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels Limited, and Thierry Mathou, Ambassador of France to India, present at the event.
A jury of Indian students has selected La Nuit au Coeur, translated as Night in the Heart, by French Mauritian novelist of Indian origin Nathacha Appanah for the Goncourt Choice of India 2026.
The winner was announced in New Delhi following a day of deliberations attended by guests including Priya Paul, Chairperson of Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels Limited, and Thierry Mathou, Ambassador of France to India. The prize recognises a work of French literature from the shortlist of the Goncourt Prize, with the selected title subsequently translated into at least one Indian language.
This year’s selection brings added attention to Appanah’s novel, which explores intimate partner femicide through the intertwined stories of three women who are victims of violence from their partners. The book had earlier won the Prix Femina in France and has now been chosen for the Goncourt Choice of India.
The Goncourt Choice of India is supported by Apeejay Surrendra Group Director Priti Paul through the Apeejay Trust and is aimed at deepening literary exchange between Indian readers and French authors. Under a new partnership with the Apeejay Trust, the programme is set to expand with additional initiatives, including a translation competition launching this month.
The competition will invite translators to submit excerpts of the winning title in English, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada, and Marathi. The winning translator will receive a publication contract supported by Institut Français India and Apeejay.
The announcement formed part of a literary gathering at The Park Hotel, where jury members, publishers, authors, and readers came together for the occasion. The event also featured a conversation between Meena Kandasamy, Prayaag Akbar, and Gautam Bhatia, moderated by Amrita Tripathi, on the theme, “In literature, are we always writing about ourselves?”
For the fifth consecutive year, students of French from across India participated in the International Goncourt Prize programme, run by the Académie Goncourt and extended to more than forty countries through the French cultural network. In India, the jury included students from The English and Foreign Languages University, Pondicherry University, Savitribai Phule Pune University, University of Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, University of Rajasthan, Banaras Hindu University, University of Punjab, and the network of Alliances françaises in India.
Over four months, jurors read and discussed four shortlisted books in original French, La Nuit au Coeur by Nathacha Appanah, Kolkhoze by Emmanuel Carrère, Le Bel Obscur by Caroline Lamarche, and La Maison Vide by Laurent Mauvignier. A series of online sessions introduced participants to the Goncourt Prize, literary criticism, and the publishing journey behind the shortlisted titles.
This edition was also marked by the patronage of Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jelloun, a member of the Prix Goncourt jury and winner of the prize in 1987. The presidents of the nine juries met at the Embassy of France in Delhi on the morning of March 17, where they debated their choices before a lunch hosted by the Ambassador, following a tradition established by the Goncourt Academy more than a century ago, before reaching a final decision early in the afternoon.
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