Le Grand prix de l’Académie française, the French Academy’s Grand Prize for Novel, was awarded yesterday (Thursday, October 30, 2025) to Yanick Lahens for her novel Passagères de nuit (Éditions Sabine Wespieser, 2025). The book, which fictionalizes the Haitian writer’s family history, was praised by Libération, Le Figaro, and other news outlets. Our warmest congratulations to the author!
Libération explains: [Passagères de nuit] retraces the journey of Haitian women, the “night passengers,” who attempt to escape alienating lives of mistreatment and abuse as slave ships crisscross the seas, bringing their human cargo to landowners. They protest, flee, and infiltrate high society—all tactics for escaping their plight.
Born in 1953 in Port-au-Prince, Yanick Lahens was awarded the Prix Femina in 2014 for her novel Bain de lune [Moon Bath].
Two other works were shortlisted: Un pont sur la Seine [A Bridge over the Seine] by Pauline Dreyfus, and Le Crépuscule des hommes [The Twilight of Men] by Alfred de Montesquiou. Last year, the Academy awarded the prize to writer Miguel Bonnefoy for his Venezuelan epic, Rêve du jaguar [The Jaguar’s Dream], a story of impoverished children in search of a better life.
Le Figaro writes: Yanick Lahens’s novel, rather short but remarkably dense, demands a slow reading. Its story unfolds through two narratives: Elizabeth is the main character of the first part, and Regina, of the second. They are two powerful women born into such adversity that they seemed destined to become subservient, and nothing else. Yet, Elizabeth and Regina are eternally linked in this book by a shared quest for freedom in 19th-century New Orleans and Haiti. In doing so, they become role models for the author, who is none other than the great-granddaughter and granddaughter of these two heroines. She carries their voices across time, the voices of all the invisible, without ever portraying them as victims.[. . .]
Excerpts translated by Ivette Romero. For original texts (in French), see https://www.swediteur.com/titre/passageres-de-nuit/, https://www.liberation.fr/culture/livres/yanick-lahens-remporte-le-grand-prix-du-roman-de-lacademie-francaise-2025-20251030_JJ4JPAPUZ5B27BXUFFUL2T4HRU/ and https://www.lefigaro.fr/livres/yanick-lahens-remporte-le-grand-prix-du-roman-de-l-academie-francaise-20251030