Prix Goncourt Winner
The 2008 Prix Goncourt, perhaps France’s most prestigious literary prize, has been awarded to the writer and filmmaker Atiqu Rahimi for his novel Syngué sabour. Pierre de Patience.
Rahimi, born in Kabul in 1962, was raised in a “liberal and westernised” family and attended the Franco-Afghan lycée. His father, a judge, and his uncle were imprisoned after a coup in the 1970s and his brother was killed in the Afghan war.
Rahimi left Afghanistan finally in 1984 and pursued university studies in France. He adapted his first novel, Terre et Cendres, for cinema and it won the Regards d’Avenir prize at Cannes in 2004. Syngué sabour, which centres on a dialogue between a dying “war hero” and his wife, is the first novel he has written in French.
The Prix Goncourt is more important for the prestige and guaranteed sales it bestows on the winner than for the prize money. Previous winners have included Marcel Proust, Simone de Beauvoir, André Malraux, Michel Tournier, Marguerite Duras and Andreï Makine.
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