UvA lecturer Fouad Laroui wins Prix Goncourt
Dutch-Moroccan writer and UvA senior lecturer Fouad Laroui has been awarded the Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle for his new collection of short stories L’étrange affaire du pantalon de Dassoukine (The Strange Story of Dassoukine’s Trousers).
The Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary prize, is awarded annually in November by the Académie Goncourt, officially the Société Littéraire des Goncourt, to the ‘most imaginative prose’ of the year. The Prix Goncourt is worth a token ten euros but guarantees the winner sales of hundreds of thousands of copies, including revenues from translation rights.
Laroui was nominated for the prize in 2010 and 2011. This is the first time in the history of the Prix Goncourt that a writer has been nominated three times in four years and has ultimately won the prize.
L’étrange affaire du pantalon de Dassoukine is a collection of nine stories, each written in a different style. The story ‘Dislocation’ is a stylistic tour de force that caught the attention of many critics.
Fouad Laroui teaches French Language and Literature at the University of Amsterdam.