American writer honored with top French literary prize

PARIS —  American writer Jonathan Littell won France’s top literary honor, the Goncourt Prize, on Monday for a 900-page novel narrated by a Nazi SS officer -- and written in French.

“Les Bienveillantes,” or “The Kindly Ones,” has won wide attention in France both for its subject matter and the nationality of its author. The Prix Goncourt is France’s most prestigious literary prize.

The 38-year-old Littell won the Academie Francaise’s top literary honor last month.

The book, which has topped French bestseller lists for weeks, will be published in the United States in 2008, following an extensive bidding war won by HarperCollins.

Littell was born in the United States, but later lived in France and wrote the book in French as a tribute to two of his favorite authors, Stendhal and Gustave Flaubert. Littell’s father, Robert Littell, is known for such spy novels as “Legends” and “An Agent in Place.”

The second-highest French literary prize, the Prix Renaudot, was given to Alain Mabanckou for “Memoires de porc-epic,” or “Memoires of a Porcupine.” The French-Congolese writer is spending the 2006-07 academic year teaching at UCLA. The university said three of Mabanckou’s novels were due to be published in English over the next year.