Novelist NDiaye wins France's top literary prize

PARIS (AP) — French-born writer Marie NDiaye won France's top literary prize Monday for "Three Strong Women," her moving tale of the struggles of woman in Europe and Africa.

NDiaye has written a dozen books, from novels to short story collections and plays, and in 2001 she won the Femina award. She was born in 1967 in Pithiviers, south of Paris, to a French mother and a Senegalese father.

Her latest novel, "Trois puissantes femmes," is the story of characters Norah, Fanta and Khadi's fight to "preserve their dignity in the face of humiliations that life has inflicted," according to her publisher Gallimard.

Norah is a French lawyer with roots in West Africa; Fanta is a Senegalese woman living in France, while Khadi is a young Senegalese woman who tries to immigrate illegally to Europe.

"They are in very difficult situations," NDiaye said in an interview with Mediapart newspaper. "(But) they have a hard inner core that is absolutely unbreakable."

In accordance with tradition, the annual prize was announced at the Drouant restaurant in Paris, where the Goncourt jury meets each year to select the book it deems to be the best new work in French literature.

Although the prize comes only with a nominal purse, the 105-year-old Prix Goncourt guarantees literary acclaim and high sales for the winning author. Past recipients include Marcel Proust, Simone de Beauvoir and Marguerite Duras.

Last year, exiled Afghan writer Atiq Rahimi won the Goncourt prize for "Syngue Sabour," a novel about the misery of a woman caring for a husband left brain-damaged by a war wound.