Like much of her work, the 42-year-old writer's tale touches on the troubled ties between Africa and its former colonial rulers.

Set between France and Senegal, the three-part novel weaves together the stories of women whose lives straddle the two continents and who are weighed down by family secrets, humiliation and betrayal.

"It is the story of three women who are each powerful in a different way," the elegant young woman, hair pulled back in a chignon, told reporters as she received the 106-year-old prize at an award ceremony in a Paris restaurant.

"What links them is a deep strength, a belief in who they are, as a way of never doubting their own humanity. They have a quiet strength."

NDiaye published her first novel aged 17, and has since carved out a place in the French pantheon as a novelist, screenwriter and the only living playwright in the repertoire of the Comedie Francaise.

"I am very happy to be a woman receiving the Goncourt," she said as she received the Goncourt, which is endowed with a symbolic 10-euro (15-dollar) prize but carries tremendous prestige.

"The book's success was already a miracle of sorts," she said. "This prize is an unexpected reward for 25 years of persistence."

Ndiaye is the first woman laureate of the Goncourt in a decade, but the soft-spoken writer denies she is a "symbol."

"I have never thought of it in those terms: 'black woman' and 'Goncourt'. I find it impossible to see things that way," she told AFP recently.

Raised by her teacher mother in the provincial town of Pithiviers south of Paris, after her father returned to Senegal, NDiaye did not travel to Africa until she was in her twenties.