John Antoine Nau

John Antoine Nau (1860–1918), 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.

In 1881 at the age of 21 years Nau boarded a three-master doing business in Haiti and the West Indies as a pilot's assistant.

For their honeymoon Nau and his bride went to Martinique, planning to stay, but family obligations forced them to return to France.

While living in Carteret in La Manche he wrote his first book of poetry, Au seuil de l'espoir (On the Threshold of Hope), which he published in 1897 at his own expense.

The war caused him to return to Paris from 1916 to 1917, then to Tréboul in Brittany, where he died on March 17, 1918, at the age of 57 years.

In 1903 a group writers gathered in Paris (J. K. Huysmans, Octave Mirbeau, Léon Daudet, the brothers Rosny, Paul Marguerite, Lucien Desclaves, Élémir Bourges, Léon Hennique, Gustave Geffroy) and awarded Enemy Force the first Prix Goncourt (by a vote of 6 to 4).

Edmond de Goncourt had stipulated in his will that they would award a prose work of imagination to distinguish and support a young literary debut full of promise.