Marie Ndiaye wins the Prix Goncourt

France's greatest literary honour, the Prix Goncourt, has been awarded to the French-Senegalese writer Marie NDiaye, the first black woman to win the 106-year-old prize. Ndiaye, 42, joins such legends of French literature as Marcel Proust, Andre Malraux and Simone de Beauvoir in winning the award, which is decided by the 10 members of the Academie Goncourt. While the actual value of the prize is a nominal €10, the boost in sales guaranteed by the award can bring the winner hundreds of thousands of euros.

Ndiaye won for her novel Trois femmes puissantes, the tale of Norah, Fanta and Khady. Le Monde said it was "a novel which speaks of the moral decay, the baseness of humanity, of suffering humanity, but which suggests, in the depths of misery, the possibility of redemption," and saw "exceptional virtuosity" in Ndiaye's writing. Liberation referred to her Ndiaye as "magisterial", adding that "neither her race nor her gender should take her away from her strengths as a writer".

Born to a Senegalese father and a French mother, Ndiaye was raised in Pithiviers, a town to the south of Paris. She wrote her first novel Quant au riche avenir at the age of 18. Six years later her novel Comedie Classique was published - it consisted of 200 pages and just one sentence. In 2001 she won the Femina prize - the French equivalent of the Orange prize - for Rosie Carpe.

Speaking yesterday outside the Restaurant Drouant in central Paris, where the presentation took place and where the Goncourt committee meets once a month, Ndiaye said: "I am very happy to be a woman receiving the Goncourt." She is the first female winner since Paule Constant in 1998; the first was Elsa Triolet in 1944. "The book's success was already a miracle of sorts," she continued. "This prize is an unexpected reward for 25 years of persistence."

Two years ago Ndiaye caused controversy when she emigrated to Germany following the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France. She has said that she finds France "monstrous" and "vulgar" under his rule and prefers life in Berlin.

‘Rosie Carpe’ is available in an English translation, published by the University of Nebraska Press