His origins are vague, his family history murky. Adikou barely knows how to pronounce his name. In the suffocating heat of summer, she can no longer bear to stay in Paris. She flies to Lomé, Togo, her father’s country about which she knows so little. In her quest to return to her roots, Adikou doesn’t know exactly what she’s looking for. From Togo, she went to the United States and created a legacy of snake skins, skylines and sultry nights. Raphaëlle Red presents her first novel Adikou (Rowohlt), nominated in the Long List for PRIX PREMIERE #5, during an interview with Ludwig Lohmann.
In the novel by this young bilingual author, it is notably a question of identity, family and the question of belonging. Raphaëlle Red was born in Paris in 1997 and grew up in Berlin, where she lives today. She studied social sciences then worked as a teacher-researcher in contemporary literature of the African diaspora, before turning to writing. Raphaëlle Red writes in French, English and German. His texts in German have already been published in the anthologies Resonanzen (Spector Books, 2022) and Glückwunsch (Hanser Berlin, 2023). Adikou is his very first novel. Adikou (Grasset, 2024): A road novel about the afterglow of the past and the meaning of finding one’s own language: “Adikou became familiar to me after a few pages, as if she had always been there, while each of Raphaëlle Red’s sentences has a new, unprecedented beauty. (Dana Vowinckel) Moderation: Ludwig Lohmann In German
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