Another Goncourt finalist, “Les Prépondérants,” which loosely translates as “The Ruling Class,” is a co-winner of the Académie Française’s top prize this year, along with “2084.” Cinematic in scope, with multiple intertwined narratives, the novel is set in the Roaring Twenties, when a Hollywood film crew comes to make a movie in an unnamed North African country under French colonial rule, upsetting the power balance between the colonizers and the colonized and challenging the prevailing conservative social norms.