A fourth finalist was Haruki Murakami, the only one of the four considered a regular Nobel contender (according to betting websites, at least — official nominations are kept secret for 50 years). Mr. Murakami dropped out, according to the prize’s web page, because he wished “to concentrate on his writing, far from media attention.”

Perhaps in response to the Nobel’s sexual misconduct crisis, a measure of gender equality was built into the process: The top two male writers and top two female authors from the public vote were named finalists.

“This prize to me is so precious because it comes from the movement of citizens,” Ms. Ly Thanh said in a telephone interview on Tuesday, “It’s not a structure, an organization, something that is established. It’s a reaction from the population.” Ms. Ly Thanh said she doubted she would have been nominated for a Nobel Prize.

The New Academy Prize is also distinctive for including popular genre authors: for instance, fantasy novelists such as J.K. Rowling, nominated by librarians in the first round, and Mr. Gaiman are unlikely to ever win the Nobel, which tends toward authors of literary fiction or serious-minded nonfiction.

Mr. Gaiman praised the prize for its “willingness to look at who are the writers who are being read, who are doing quality work, and who, in whatever department they’re in, are changing the world and making people’s lives better.”

He added that Ms. Rowling “has had more impact on more lives, I would suspect, over the last two decades, than pretty much any writer who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature ever.”

The New Academy Prize has received some criticism in Sweden for a perceived lack of seriousness (“The only thing really worse than the old Academy is the new one, consisting of 117 Instagram celebrities with more or less vague connections to the cultural world,” wrote one Swedish columnist.) But the prize’s founder, the journalist Alexandra Pascalidou, told The New York Times in July that she was not hoping to replace the Nobel but push it to be more “contemporary, open to the world, inclusive, transparent.”

Guadeloupe is an administrative department of France, and Ms. Condé’s novels are written in French.

“I belong to a small island with no say on international issues,” Ms. Condé said. “Guadeloupe is mentioned only when there is a hurricane, but I have always been convinced we have a wonderful culture fabricated from various influences: Europeans, Africans, Indians, Chinese. Winning this prize would mean that our voice, the voice of the Guadeloupeans, is starting to be heard. It would be the beginning of a true Guadeloupean identity.”