Amira Ghenim, Tunisian author, wins the 2024 Arab Literature Prize for her novel The disaster of the house of notablesaward awarded by the Arab World Institute and the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation.
The 2024 Arab Literature Prize was awarded to Tunisian writer Amira Ghenim for her novel The disaster of the house of notablestranslated from Arabic by Souad Labbize and published by Philippe Rey in the collection khamsa. This award, created jointly by the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation and the Arab World Institute in 2013, highlights each year a work written or translated into French by an author from the Arab League.
Pierre Leroy, managing director of the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation and president of the jury, praised “an intense novel interweaving family intrigue and great history, which paints a complex and nuanced portrait of a Tunisia in the midst of change.” He also praised the unique writing of the author who, thanks to an elaborate narrative process, was able to give birth to a powerful work carried by a new collection dedicated to the Arabic-speaking literature of the Maghreb.
For his part, Jack Lang, President of the IMA, underlined “the importance of promoting the richness of the cultures of the Arab world, of which literature and poetry are major modes”. In a context where the translation of Arabic-speaking texts is becoming rarer, he insisted on the need to highlight authors from the Arab world.
The award-winning novel, The disaster of the house of notablestransposes more than fifty years of Tunisian history, from the struggle for independence to the revolution of 2011. Against a backdrop of political upheavals, it intertwines the destinies of two bourgeois families – the Naifers, rigid and conservative, and the Rassaa, liberals and progressives. One December evening in Tunis, Zbeida Rassaa, young wife of Mohsen Naifer, is suspected of having an affair with Tahar Haddad, a committed intellectual known for his avant-garde positions on women's rights. Through an intertwining of secrets and memories, this choral novel explores the disastrous repercussions of this disastrous evening.
The complex architecture of the story, playing on overlapping points of view, leads us to discover the real sequence of facts. For Amira Ghenim, “this novel glorifies empathy” and transmits “a very simple message: to each one their own truth, their hidden sufferings, their wars and their defeats. But in this awful solitude which is the very essence of being, there is no pain or joy that man cannot share.
Born in 1978 in Sousse, Amira Ghenim has an Arabic degree, a doctorate in linguistics and teaches at the university of her hometown. Author of academic essays and three novels, including The yellow folder (2019) et fiery earth (2024), she signs with The disaster of the house of notables – finalist for the Arab Booker Prize and Comar d'Or in Tunisia in 2021 – his first work translated into French.
She succeeds the Iraqi writer Feurat Alani, winner in 2023 for I remember Fallujah (JC Lattès). The jury which ruled this year brought together, in addition to Pierre Leroy, personalities from the literary world such as the Moroccan writer Mahi Binebine, the columnist Nicolas Carreau, the translator Gilles Gauthier, the journalist Houda Ibrahim and the Lebanese writer Alexandre Najjar.
Beyond this Prize which has become a reference, the Arab World Institute and the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation launched the Arab Literature Prize for high school students in 2024, endowed with 4,000 euros. Students from the Versailles academy will vote for their favorite work among the final selection, while participating in work around reading and meetings with the authors. In 2023, the novel If I had a franc by Abdelkrim Saifi (ed. Anne Carrière) won this Prize.
These two awards are part of the desire of the IMA and the Lagardère Foundation to promote the diversity of Arabic literature, in an intercultural dialogue between the Arab world, France and Europe. Through debates, conferences, shows, courses and major exhibitions, the IMA strives to reflect all the creative energies of this geographical area. The Lagardère Foundation, for its part, has supported the careers of young talents since 1989, in France and internationally, developing programs in favor of cultural diversity.
