Philippe Jaenada won the 2026 Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize, for his book L'Inconnue du quai de Javel (The Unknown Woman of the Quai de Javel), a recreation of the murder of a 29-year-old Breton woman named Louise Cansot. The Guardian reported that Cansot, known as "the woman with a hundred portraits" because she was so sought-after as a model for artists in Montparnasse, was found dead on September 7, 1949, but police never established the identity of her murderer.
This year's Prix Goncourt "has been overshadowed by the allegation that one of the other longlisted books, the Canadian-Haitian author Thélyson Orélien's C'était ça ou mourir (It Was That or Die), was "almost entirely" written by artificial intelligence," the Guardian added. The Académie Goncourt withdrew Orélien's book from its longlist, though the author has denied using AI to write his novel.