Laurent Mauvignier Wins the 2026 Nordic Goncourt Choice

For its second edition, the Choix Goncourt Nordique brought together literature enthusiast students from universities and French high schools across Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. After lively and enthusiastic debates, Laurent Mauvignier emerged as the winner with his novel La maison vide (The Empty House).

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The jury was won over by the powerful style and the depth of the imagery, which breathe life into a family saga marked by silence and forgotten histories. In a place that witnesses four generations, the author reimagines his family’s story across a 20th century scarred by the violence of war. At a time when autofiction dominates the global literary landscape, Laurent Mauvignier reinvents the genre in a masterful fresco.

Laurent Mauvignier first gained recognition with his debut novel, Loin d’eux (1999, Éditions de Minuit), and has since built an eclectic body of work characterized by a formal ambition that combines high standards with a desire to remain accessible. In his tenth novel, The Empty House, awarded in November 2025 with France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, and more recently the Nordic Goncourt Choice Prize, the author revisits some of his recurring themes, such as inhibited speech, the link between the intimate and the collective and the terrors of childhood.

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The Empty House

In 1976, my father reopened the house he had inherited from his mother, which had been locked for twenty years.
Inside: a piano, a marble-topped dresser with chipped edges, a Légion d’Honneur medal, photographs where a face had been cut out with scissors.
A house filled with stories, where two world wars, rural life in the early 20th century, but also my grandmother Marguerite, her mother Marie-Ernestine, her mother before her, and all the men who orbited around them intersect.
All of them left their mark on the house and were gradually erased. I tried to bring them back into the light to understand what their story might have been, and how its shadow still lingers over ours.

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The deliberation, held on Friday, April 24, was opened with a recorded address by Philippe Claudel, President of the Académie Goncourt and author of acclaimed works such as The Grey Souls, Monsieur Linh and His Child, Brodeck’s Report.

Founded in 1903 by brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, the Prix Goncourt rewards “the best work of imaginative prose (in French) published in the year” and remains France’s most prestigious literary award, with hundreds of thousands of copies sold annually following the announcement in November.

The Choix Goncourt International, an extension of the Goncourt Prize, was first launched in Poland in 1998 and is now active in over 40 countries. Supported by French Institutes and cultural services of some French embassies, it serves as a global literary barometer, measuring the resonance of the four Goncourt shortlisted titles among student readers worldwide. Its dual mission is to promote contemporary French-speaking literature in its original language and to encourage translations and foreign publications of the selected works.

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This new “Choix” enriches an already vibrant network. While juries already existed in Sweden and Finland, this is the second time that the entire Nordic region has united under a single literary banner. The Choix Goncourt Nordique is organized in partnership with the French Institutes of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, the Alliance Française of Reykjavik and the French Embassy in Iceland. A beautiful French-speaking literary journey that is only just beginning.

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