Let France be ... something else

The French, to put it mildly, tend to disdain foreign influences on their culture, whether in food, fashion, movies, or literature. So it'll be interesting to gauge the reaction after American expatriot Jonathan Littell won France's leading literary prize. Littell, who once lived in France, now resides in Spain, and is the son of spy novelist Robert Littell, won the Goncourt Prize Monday for his Nazi-era novel "Les Bienveillantes." Earlier, he won the Académie Française prize for the same work.

French critics, straining to be magnanimous, may yet wax philosophical on a foreigner winning the award, except that there's an unsettling trend developing here. Nancy Huston, a Canadian who lives in France, recently won the Femina prize for her new book. What would Proust and Hugo say about North Americans snapping up their nation's top literary awards? And where, oh where are today's rising French novelists?