Residing at the Grand Turk passage in Caen (Calvados) to become the Grand Turk of the passage: Zadig Hamroune’s childhood dream came true half a century later. It is here, on this isolated square in the city center and planted with four Japanese cherry trees, that the recent winner of his city’s literary prize, aged 57, meets us one afternoon in April. This place has been, since he was very little, the pantheon of the kid with Kabyle origins. He is 5 years old, and although he lived in the 1970s in Hérouville-Saint-Clair, three kilometers away, that doesn’t stop him. A UFO in his working-class, immigrant family background, he does not hesitate to cover the distance on foot, to gaze into the Ottoman fresco that adorns the walls of the passage.
Because before going to admire the work, which represents a sultan and his grand chamberlain, Zadig Hamroune, 12 years old, reads, becomes passionate, devours books at the municipal library of the town of 106,000 inhabitants. Stendhal, Zola, Flaubert, Rousseau…
Denied origins
Passionate about French literature, the suburban kid stands out among his family. In total contrast to those around him. His father, an alcoholic, recharges his batteries at the local PMU. His mother, illiterate, irons the laundry. His white neighbors only see him as a “Arab”. Origins that he denies, moreover, “because for me, at the time, an Arab was dirty”, he confides. He still writes, in The barbaric nighthis self-portrait published in 2023: “Curly hair is ugly, it looks messy. »
At school too, he stands out. The writer, who today makes his living from his pen, remembers: “After handing in an assignment at home, my history and geography teacher, in class 5e, hesitated between giving me a score of 0 or 20. She doubted that I was the author. I then asked him to isolate me in a room and give me the assignment of his choice. An hour later, she apologized and I got a 20.”
I liked doing rather feminine activities. But my parents let me be free because I wasn’t a problem.
Brilliant, Zadig Hamroune juggles between these two…
