At Drouant (Paris), on November 4, 2025, shortly after noon, the Académie Goncourt crowned Laurent Mauvignier for ‘La Maison vide’ (Prix Goncourt 2025), published by Éditions de Minuit (Minuit), in the first round with 6 votes against 4. A favorite since his fall literary prizes, Le Monde, Nancy – Le Point, and Landerneau. The 58-year-old writer sees his epic novel come into the spotlight. A red band, soon crowds of readers.
A November Tuesday at Drouant, at the heart of the literary liturgy
On the day the name of a Goncourt 2025 laureate is announced, the midday light changes its fabric around Drouant (Paris), in the 2nd arrondissement. From the steps to the paneled salons, the wait remains a discreet music. On November 4, 2025, the president of the Académie Goncourt, Philippe Claudel, appears on the porch. Cameras line up and the crowd gathers. The verdict falls, clear, almost whispered yet ample. Laurent Mauvignier wins for ‘La Maison vide’ (Prix Goncourt 2025). The book, already supported by critics, enters its moment of full visibility.
A decisive first round, six votes against four
The decision has the clarity of a bow stroke. The ten jurors voted, and the majority emerged in the first round, 6 votes for Mauvignier against 4 for Caroline Lamarche, finalist with Le Bel obscur. The Academy brings together a precise distribution of writers and publishers, under the authority of a discreet and firm president. Philippe Claudel ensures the purity of a closed-door vote, followed by a public announcement around 12:50–1:00 PM. The ceremony has its own economy: for the laureate, a symbolic check of 10 €, and above all, the assurance of a destiny in bookstores. Previous experiences teach us: the wave of several hundred thousand copies is not a myth. It is a curve that is verified almost every year and will once again disrupt the printing schedule.
The protocol consists of few gestures and much attention: the meal, the deliberation, the envelope, then the exit on the steps. At the moment the name is pronounced, the microphones capture more than information: a shift. This score 6–4 indicates a clear preference, without crushing the debate. It reminds us that the Goncourt 2025 is not the result of a bland consensus. On the contrary, it is the outcome of a demanding conversation. In this conversation, a certain ideal of the novel is chosen.
A favorite who held the lead since September
The name circulated since the start of the literary season. ‘La Maison vide’ (Prix Goncourt 2025) had already won the ‘Le Monde’ Literary Prize 2025. Additionally, it won the Nancy – Le Point Booksellers’ Prize and the Landerneau Readers’ Prize. This trajectory had positioned the work strongly as Drouant approached. The writer did not seek media frenzy; it is the consistency of his work, loyalty to a demanding publishing house, Minuit, and the density of a book of about 750 pages, that made it evident. The critics, without emphasis, recognized the ambition of a chronicle. This one is both an intimate investigation and a recomposed memory.
Each of these prizes says something about the reception. Le Monde distinguishes the breadth of a novel of sensitive ideas. Nancy – Le Point signals the support of a network of booksellers attentive to substantial texts. Landerneau echoes the voice of readers. Indeed, it reminds us that a book of this magnitude can conquer beyond informed circles. This critical, professional, and popular tripod served as a springboard: at Drouant (Paris), it only remained to confirm.
The novel: a labyrinth of lineages and silences
One enters ‘La Maison vide’ (Prix Goncourt 2025) as one pushes open an old door. Thus, one feels an instinctive respect for the voices that slumber there. The saga spans four generations, in a French countryside traversed by the tremors of the century. The two world wars no longer form a succession but a continuum, a long ripple that alters gestures, loyalties, and even the way of looking at the living. At the center, a Legion of Honor medallion and a missing face on a photograph offer two enigmas. Thus, these small and tenacious enigmas serve as the basis for the story’s architecture. Mauvignier refuses the monumental staircase of hierarchical plots; he adopts a horizontality that allows each character to breathe at their own pace. The secret passes from one mouth to another, like a burning currency. Consequently, the novel fulfills its promises of literary investigation as much as a novel of lineage. The narration favors blind spots and repetitions, a step forward, a return. Thus, it makes one feel that the truth of a lineage lies as much in what is missing as in what is said. In the kitchen with mismatched tiles, a granddaughter’s voice stumbles over the grandfather’s silence; in the attic, stained letters shift certainties. The house becomes an acoustic.
Drouant, stage and memory of a prize
The Drouant restaurant (Paris), in the Opera district, is not just a setting. It acts as a clock. It is there that the literary year is played out, in the precise sense. One day in Paris, measures the distance between a work and its audience. The house has its named salons, its familiar benches, its library where the jurors withdraw. It is also a place of observation, a platform over the city. Drouant has learned to silence the noise around it, to allow, at the appointed time, the president’s voice to pronounce a few words that shift the center of gravity of the season.
In the staircase, one can still hear the echoes of previous awards; the velvet and wood retain the memory of decisive hours. The place attracts the press, passersby, and readers. They come to share this brief moment when a novel changes status. Drouant does not create prestige; it offers it a theater. Upon leaving, Paris becomes the ordinary city again, but the book enters a different duration.
The face of a writer: constancy and metamorphosis
Laurent Mauvignier has been publishing since the late 1990s, almost always with Minuit. His language has been forged against the obvious, in a narrative breath that loves refractions and listening. It shows empathy for those who speak softly. He comes from a France of ties where collective traumas are only expressed on the margins. Families carry, without always naming them, the traces of history. The author has often questioned the group, the horde, the village, the neighborhood, these micro-societies where the fate of the most vulnerable is decided. The work has built a faithful territory, ranging from the football stadiums of Dans la foule. It extends to the Algerian trauma of Des hommes. It also includes the nights of terror of Histoires de la nuit. ‘La Maison vide’ (Prix Goncourt 2025) adds an additional layer: genealogy as investigation and memory as architecture.
The other finalists and the ethics of a choice
This year’s shortlist included Caroline Lamarche with Le Bel obscur, Emmanuel Carrère with Kolkhoze, and Nathacha Appanah for La nuit au cœur. Four different works in tone and angle, but a common point: a narrative ambition that refuses shortcuts. The victory of Mauvignier, clear but contested, does not cancel the conversation of the texts; it prolongs it. It expresses the jury’s confidence in a novel. This novel values the work of the sentence at the heart of its economy. Moreover, it does not sacrifice the pleasure of reading.
In Lamarche, a chiaroscuro writing explores the zones of wavering desire and memory. Carrère continues, under other latitudes, his art of storytelling that mixes investigation and introspection. Appanah, already praised elsewhere this fall, works on the motif of the night and its fears with almost musical precision. The jury’s choice, in preferring ‘La Maison vide’ (Prix Goncourt 2025), does not deny these strengths; it affirms that, this year, the momentum was towards lineage as a compass for the present.
The economy of the red band
The Goncourt Prize does not reward with numbers, it provokes numbers. The print run advance, the reprints, and the national distribution form a well-known ballet for booksellers. Then, translation into foreign languages adds to this process. The famous red band addresses the hurried reader. In recent years, the effect is commonly measured in several hundred thousand copies. This concerns the following year. Minuit will have to orchestrate this rise with its sense of measure; on the shelves, ‘La Maison vide’ (Prix Goncourt 2025) will attract attention to the previous work.
This mechanism mobilizes the entire book chain: printers who adjust to deadlines and distributors who redistribute stocks. Moreover, independent bookstores redo their tables, while platforms relay and foreign rights open up. The band is not just a marketing signal; it is a promise of conversation. When it settles on a title from Minuit, it redirects the general public’s attention. Thus, it highlights a tradition of prose that favors restraint and conciseness.
A year of distinctions, the lead-up to a Goncourt
Critical favor is not a guarantee, but it prepares the conditions for broader acceptance. Le Monde had already distinguished ‘La Maison vide’ (Prix Goncourt 2025) in September. Then, it received the Nancy – Le Point Booksellers’ Prize as well as the Landerneau Readers’ Prize. This series placed Mauvignier’s words at the center of the fall literary conversation. Here, one measures how prizes respond to each other. This amplifies the buzz around books and temporarily draws a reading geography.
Renaudot, the other announcement "in the wake"
In the same place, just after the Goncourt announcement, the Renaudot Prize honored Adélaïde de Clermont-Tonnerre for Je voulais vivre. Drouant caught its breath for barely a handful of minutes. This coordination is not an anecdote: it reveals the proximity of the two autumn prizes. Sometimes, it also shows the subtle rivalry between them. Moreover, it illustrates how they structure the collective narrative of the book in France.
What the novel unfolds
In ‘La Maison vide’ (Prix Goncourt 2025), the entry is through silences. Moreover, modest objects retain memory. The story brings out lineage in fragments, through damaged images, family archives, and hesitant gestures. The sentence moves forward, returns, shifts the frame, until it makes one feel how wars and violence reconfigure bonds. It is not a mystery novel, but a sensitive investigation where the essential plays out in the shadow of words. One closes the book thinking that absence is not a gap. Indeed, it is one of the forms of memory.
The journey of a writer
Born in 1967, Laurent Mauvignier has made Minuit his home base. Apprendre à finir earned him a unique recognition as early as 2000. Des hommes established him as an explorer of post-memories. Histoires de la nuit confirmed his narrative power. Theater, screenplays, adaptations: his work moves from one genre to another with the same determination to look at the world askew, from its minor fractures. The illness he recently mentioned has not slowed his momentum. However, it may have brought him closer to the areas where the body trembles and the language stretches.
What a Goncourt Reveals
Each Goncourt sheds light on its era. In 2025, the Academy rewards a novel that avoids the pastiche of the archive. It favors the slow rise of a sentence imbued with history. Mauvignier does not yield to noisy current events. He records the returns, the echoes. He illustrates what remains unspoken during official celebrations and grants his characters the dignity of silence. Thus, he reveals the importance of the unspoken in human interactions. The effect in bookstores will be tangible, but the essential plays out elsewhere: in the intimacy of future readings, where thousands of readers will experience that rare sensation of a book that breathes.
The list also says something about the reading country. It endorses a calendar of desire: September’s return, autumn’s jousts, winter’s hearths. It reminds us that the novel can still make an event, without shouting, by shifting language and perspectives. ‘La Maison vide’ (Prix Goncourt 2025) joins the titles that make history, not by noise, but by persistence. This novel stands out for its ability to leave a lasting mark without noise.
Recent Comparisons, Continuity of a List
The continuity of the list tells in its own way the evolution of sensibilities. After a 2024 edition marked by a novel influenced by history and public debate, 2025 confirms the vigor. The novel of filiation and a prose that explores more than it dismantles continue to stand out. This prose shifts the perspective without raising its voice.
After the Announcement, a Country of Bookstores
One can already imagine the wandering of the laureate from signing to signing. The bookstore halls will be full, and the regional press will join in. Readers will come to express what the book has captured of them. It will take time for the wave to stabilize, for us to know how ‘La Maison vide’ (Prix Goncourt 2025) will have shifted the map of our readings. Until then, the book chain is set in motion, and the winter appointments will make room for the novel in shop windows where, tomorrow, the red of the ribbon will set the tone for the gazes.