The Franco-Rwandan writer and musician Gaël Faye, 42, is crowned with the 2024 Renaudot prize for Jacarandapublished on August 14 by Grasset editions. It thus succeeds Ann Scott, rewarded in 2023 for The Insolent (Calmann-Lévy).
Propelled to the finalist list for the Goncourt Prize, Jacaranda had also carved out a place among the selections for the Grand Prix du roman of the Académie Française and the Fnac Novel Prize. For the second time in a row, the writer-musician dives back into the history of Rwanda, his mother's country of origin where he now lives. Through the eyes of his new hero, Milan, the author depicts the scars and attempts to rebuild a country devastated by the terrible genocide of the Tutsi. In an interview published in our columns last July, the musician writer explained that he wanted to repair personal wounds and “deconstruct racist thinking and the ideas of certain negationist circles”.
Second novel by the writer, Jacaranda has sold more than 160,000 copies since its publication, according to GFK data. Last September, the book already had six reprints and was at the top of the bestseller charts. It is also promised to be an international triumph, since Grasset editions have signed several translations.
A bookstore success
A new literary talent highly appreciated by the general public, Gaël Faye won honors in 2016 with a first partially autobiographical title, Small Country (Grasset). Favorably received by critics and sold 1,650,000 copies in France, it was awarded numerous distinctions including the Goncourt prize for high school students, the Fnac novel prize, the prize for the first French novel and the prize for novel by France Culture-Télérama students. It was also a global success, sold in 30 languages in more than 200,000 copies around the world.
“Jacaranda”: the publisher’s presentation
What secrets hides the shadow of the jacaranda tree, Stella's favorite tree? It will take his friend Milan years to discover it. Years to break through the silences of Rwanda, devastated after the Tutsi genocide. By giving back their words to the deceased, young people will escape loneliness. And will find peace near the magnificent shores of Lake Kivu. Over four generations, with his unique gentleness, Gaël Faye tells us the terrible story of a country which despite everything tries to dialogue and forgiveness. As a tree stands between darkness and light, Jacaranda celebrates humanity, paradoxical, loving, alive.
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In 2020, the title was even brought to the cinema by Eric Barbierbased on a screenplay co-written with the first person concerned. The same year, Gaël Faye published, aimed at young people, The Boredom of Endless Afternoons (Les Arènes), book-CD in which the author combines his two passions: music and writing.
Renaudot from the 2024 pocket book essay
The Renaudot Prize jurors also honored:
- Renaudot Prize essay: Checkmate in paradise by Sébastien Lapaque (Actes Sud)
Brazil, early 1942. The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, who fled Europe and Nazism, visits Georges Bernanos, an iconoclastic French novelist, at his farm at Croix-des-Âmes, in Barbacena. On February 23 of the same year, Zweig committed suicide with his wife, Lotte, in Petrópolis. For Sébastien Lapaque, it is the subject of a long-term, intimate and political investigation, miraculously luminous. At the heart of a geography as sunny as the context is dark, at a time of the sacking of the Old Continent and the advent of neotropical fascism, the story is built around the conversation that the author imagines between these two giants of the 20th century, the godless Jew and the freed Catholic – the delicate painter of the torments of the soul and the rebellious visionary, ardent practitioner of the interior life (publisher's presentation). Published on September 4, the work reached 2,100 copies sold according to GFK.
- Renaudot Pocket Book Prize: Light years by Serge Rezvani (Philippe Rey)
Initially published in 1967 by Flammarion, Light years by Serge Rezvani benefited from several successive reissues at Le Seuil in 1986 then at Actes Sud in 1997. The new edition by Philippe Rey appeared on October 17, 2024. The work is a “ attempted fictionalized autobiography “. The “hero” revisits his adventurous childhood, in the light of a present love and a particularly happy daily life. These events take place in a prehistoric South, among the ant-lions, in a decomposing Switzerland, in a ghost train, then in Paris, not to mention trips by bus, car and barge. We also find our “hero” at the spectacle of war, of the Liberation. For the present, a small house lost in the Mediterranean forest and, on the fringes of sleep, the love of the author: Lula.
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