Natural sciences teacher Alexis Jenni won France's most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, on Wednesday with a debut novel about France's colonial wars.
Jenni, 48, who teaches at a Jesuit-run secondary school in the southeastern city of Lyon, won for his 600-page "L'Art francais de la guerre" (The French Art of War).
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The novel traces France's military history, from Indochina to Algeria, through the eyes of a veteran of the country's colonial wars who has become a painter and a young man he is teaching to paint.
While the prize is worth only 10 euros ($14), winning authors can expect bumper sales thanks to the publicity that it generates.
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Heavyweight publisher Gallimard agreed to publish the novel after Jenni sent the manuscript to them and another publishing house by mail. The novel has been selling briskly since it went on sale in August.
Winners of the prize over the past six years have sold an average of 400,000 copies of their winning works, according to market research firm GfK.
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Last year the Goncourt went to France's leading fiction provocateur, Michel Houellebecq, whom the Goncourt award committee had ignored for years even though he has dominated the French literary scene.