Force ennemie
First printing (no deluxe-paper copies were issued).
Extremely rare printing, without limitation statement, from the first issue of January 26, 1903.
The first winner in the history of the prize, John-Antoine Nau — real name Eugène Léon Édouard Torquet — was completely unknown in Parisian literary circles. Born in San Francisco in 1860 and settled in Saint-Tropez, he had until then published only a privately printed pamphlet of verse and a few short stories in La Revue blanche. It was thanks to the decisive intervention of Félix Fénéon that his novel came before the jury and won the prize on 21 December 1903, by six votes to four. Nau, absent from the deliberations, let his brother accept the award on his behalf.
Force ennemie is a work of speculative fiction in which a narrator interned in an asylum finds himself transported to a foreign planet — an unusual novel at the crossroads of science fiction and visionary literature. In honoring this atypical work, the Académie Goncourt made a bold, unexpected and foundational gesture, marking the starting point of more than a century of Prix Goncourt history.
Rare first printing without limitation statement.
From the library of the Comte de Bondy (bookplate).