Amira Ghenim’s novel Le Désastre de la Maison des Notables won Prix Fragonard de Littérature étrangère 2025 in Paris, France on Thursday, April 3, 2025.
Prix Fragonard de Littérature étrangère (English: Fragonard Prize for Foreign Literature) is a French literary prize that rewards a book written by a woman, translated into French and published in France, to give more visibility to foreign women’s literature, by supporting non-French-speaking authors, as well as their translators. The aim of the award, created by the perfume house Fragonard in 2022, is to open up to other cultures and highlight female talents. In that first year, Chika Unigwe made the second selection.
The 2025 jury was comprised of writer and translator Jakuta Alikavazovic, NGO Elise Care founder Élise Boghossian, writer, editor and journalist Clara Dupont-Monod, model and actress Liya Kebede, writer and journalist Olivia de Lamberterie, director and screenwriter Maria Larrea, writer and journalist Mathieu Palain, librarian Danielle Cillien-Sabatier, Fragonard CEO Agnes Costa, Fragonard Director of Culture and Communication Charlotte Urbain, and literary director Alina Gurdiel. This jury announced the longlist or premier selection of ten non-French-speaking female writers whose translations were published between August 2024 and February 2025 on December 9.
The winner was declared to be the novel Le Désastre de la Maison des Notables written by Amira Ghenim and published by Editions Philippe Rey, translated by Souad Labbize at the Fragonard Perfume Museum in Paris.
Amira Ghenim said, “Receiving a literary prize is always an honor, a unique experience with a sweet and special flavor. But receiving the Prix Fragonard is—in addition to the flavor—as you may have guessed, a scent, a fragrance that remains in the memory, delicate, fresh, and ethereal. It is often said that a perfume is a story; it has a beginning, an evolution, and a final note, so it is almost obvious that a perfume house that composes such beautiful olfactory stories is one that celebrates the art of storytelling.”
The novel which also won Prix de la Littérature Arabe 2024 comes with the blurb;
An ambitious choral novel, a family epic spanning more than half a century of history and struggles for women’s rights in Tunisia.
Tunisia, 1935. In a country in the throes of political turmoil, the destinies of two prominent bourgeois families intersect: the Naifers, rigid and conservative, and the Rassaas, liberal and progressive.
One December night in Tunis, Mohsen Naifer’s young wife, Zbeida Rassaa, is suspected of having an affair with Tahar Haddad, an intellectual of modest origins known for his union activism and avant-garde stances, particularly in favor of women’s rights.
In an interweaving of secrets and memories, several members of both families, as well as their servants, revisit the disastrous repercussions of that fateful evening over the following decades. Like a game of Russian dolls, each story contains others and reverses the perspective. The reader will joyfully piece together the pieces to try to discover what really happened to Zbeida Rassaa.
The Disaster at the House of Notables transposes more than fifty years of Tunisian history—from the struggle for independence to the 2011 revolution—and the struggle for women. Remarkably masterful, with a clear style and clever construction, this dazzling choral novel features captivating and unforgettable characters.
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