US author Richard Ford wins France's Femina prize

US author Richard Ford has won France's prestigious Femina award for best foreign novel with his book Canada. Cameroonian author Leonora Miano won the best French novel section.

Richard Ford with his book Canada Montage RFI

"It's a great honour and a great surprise," commented Ford, whose Canada illustrates the loss of innocence through the story of a boy whose parents rob a bank.

Ford won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer in 1996 for his earlier novel Independence Day.

Cameroonian author Leonora Miano is a "great author" with "the future in front of her", according to Femina jury president Diane Margerie.

Miano's book La Saison de l'Ombre (The Season of Darkness) is about the loss of loved ones in sub-Saharan Africans during the slave trade.

Miano, who was born in Douala in 1973, has lived in France since 1991.

The third Femina prize, for best essay, went to Jean-Paul and Raphael Enthoven, who are father and son, for their Dictionnaire amoureux de Proust, written to mark the 100th anniversary of the publication of Du côté de chez Swann (Swann's Way), the first volume of Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time).