L’Anomalie

A novel by the president of the Oulipo, L’Anomalie combines thriller, satire and speculative fiction around a dizzying premise: Air France flight 006 from Paris to New York lands twice, three months apart, with the same passengers aboard. The state places this “double” flight under quarantine, while scientists, the military, religious authorities and the media seize on the mystery. Le Tellier orchestrates a polyphony of duplicated lives — a has-been writer, a hitwoman, a Nigerian pop star, a lawyer, an architect and others — playing with genre pastiche and slipping in Oulipian winks (shifts of register, enumerations, mock archival documents, even a reproduced New York Times front page).

Awarded exceptionally by videoconference — the pandemic having forced a postponement to December — the Prix Goncourt crowned a “3.0” novel that interrogates identity, free will and simulation with tightly controlled relish. An instant success, L’Anomalie became one of the best-selling Goncourt winners in the history of the prize, with more than 700,000 copies sold within a few months.