Force ennemie is a novel by French author John Antoine Nau

John Antoine Nau

John Antoine Nau , real name Eugène Léon Édouard Torquet, was a French poet and writer most famous for his novel Enemy Force, which won the first Prix Goncourt in 1903.-Life:...

. It won the inaugural Prix Goncourt

Prix Goncourt

The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...

 in 1903.

In 2010 Michael Shreve adapted it into English as Enemy Force.

Plot summary

The main character is a poet who mysteriously wakes up in a rubber room, locked away in a lunatic asylum, apparently at the request of a relative due to alcoholism or perhaps jealousy. He then becomes possessed by an "Alien Force" from another planet, Kmôhoûn, whose crazy voice is constantly screaming in his head. He then falls in love with a female inmate, Irene, but she leaves and so he follows her to the ends of the earth, while the Alien Force cohabits his body.

Critical reception

It won the inaugural Prix Goncourt

Prix Goncourt

The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...

 in 1903. The novel was only a mediocre success, but it did not prevent the president of the academy, Joris-Karl Huysmans

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans was a French novelist who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans . He is most famous for the novel À rebours...

, to say much later: "It is still the best we have crowned." In 1906, Paul Léautraud said "The Prix Goncourt has really only been given once—the first time to Nau."

External links

• Excerpt from Enemy Force, from The Brooklyn Rail InTranslation, August 2009.