Jean-Baptiste Andrea has won France’s most prestigious literary award, the Prix Goncourt, for a bestselling saga of the tumultuous life of a sculptor set against the backdrop of the rise of fascism in Italy.

Andrea, who turned to novel-writing after a long career as a screenwriter, has described Veiller sur elle as an expansive story of love, friendship and revenge. The novel stood out for a literary prize that has often been seen as elitist, as it already had strong sales and had been defined by some critics as a “popular” read.

The book, which tackles Italian political history and class structure from the first world war to the 1980s, looks at the rise of fascism as a gradual phenomenon of everyday life, as well as feminism, and art and patronage. “I wanted to write the book I wanted to read when I was younger,” Andrea recently told France Inter radio.

Questioned on why a popular saga that pulled the reader along with the story was seen as less likely to appeal to elitist circles in France, Andrea told France Inter: “I feel that today we’ve left the prerogative of telling stories to cinema, as if there was something a bit vulgar about telling a story, as if [telling a story] excluded depth, but I think we can be popular and at the same time deep, and give different levels of reading to different types of readers and generations.”

Several literary prizes have been announced in recent days in France.

Ann Scott – who gained a cult following with her 2000 novel Superstars, about generation X, clubbing and the Paris techno scene – won the Prix Renaudot for her new novel Les Insolants, the story of a film composer who leaves Paris for a remote part of Brittany.

Neige Sinno won the Prix Femina for Triste Tigre, about the sexual abuse she endured as a child.