Philippe Jaenada wins the Goncourt with L’Inconnue du quai de Javel
The Flammarion investigation novel reopens a postwar death and takes the prize in the first round of voting.
Philippe Jaenada has won the 2026 Prix Goncourt with L’Inconnue du quai de Javel, published by Flammarion. The Académie Goncourt announced the result at Drouant restaurant in Paris on 3 November: Jaenada received six votes, against three for Sylvain Prudhomme’s De l’autre côté du lac. The book returns to the death of a young woman in postwar Paris, reconstructing her story through judicial archives, places and documents. Rather than treating the case as a simple crime mechanism, the novel focuses on the missing woman and the social injustices surrounding her life. The award therefore places at the centre a work poised between investigation, memory and narrative, in which documentary research becomes an act of literary restoration.