The Association of Franco-Tunisian Lawyers crowned, Monday, November 18, Abnousse Shalmani of the 2024 Gisèle Halimi Prize, for her novel I have sinned, sinned in pleasurepublished by Grasset editions. The winner will receive her distinction, worth 3,000 euros, during an award ceremony scheduled for the evening at the Hôtel de Lassay in Paris.
With I have sinned, sinned in pleasurealready crowned with the Simone Veil 2024 prize, Abnousse Shalmani offers a third title, still closely linked to her city of origin, Tehran. Immersed in the 1950s, the reader discovers Forough Farrokhzad, a muse of Iranian literary circles barely 20 years old. Following a reading of her poems, the young woman meets Cyrus. A Francophile scholar, he translated the poems of Pierre Louysrelates the life of the poet and that of his great love, Marie de Régnier. Forough thus glimpses the life she might have dreamed of if she had not been married to an artist without imagination, restricted by her family and the customs of her country.
A work marked by its origins
Born in 1977 in Tehran, Iran, Abnousse Shalmani fled, with his family, the Ayatollah’s takeover. Khomeini and settled in France in 1985. After studying history and modern literature, the author first became a columnist for L’Express, i24News and on LCI. In 2014, she published Khomeini, Sade et moi (Grasset), in which she recalls her very young childhood under the tutelage of “crow women”, the guardians of morality, during the Iranian revolution. Exiled in Paris, she found what she called “the bearded ones”, from whom she emancipated herself by discovering Sade. Will follow Exiles also die of love (2018), Praise of the metic (2019) or more recently Secularism, I write your name (2024), all published by Grasset.
Created in 2023, the Gisèle Halimi Prize pays tribute to one of the emblematic figures of the fight for the cause of women. It rewards the author of a work of fiction published in French and published between 1is January and 1is October of the current year. The work must evoke the strength, courage and fight of women for their freedom, but also for equality between men and women.
Chaired by Samia Maktouf,, the jury was also composed ofAriane Ascaride, Razika Adnani, Dominique Attias, Elie Chouraqui, Christian Charrière-Bournazel, Annick Cojean, Julie Couturier, Nadia Hai, Margot Gallimard, Jeanne Grange, Aurélie Julia, Bariza Khiari, Jean-Yves Le Borgne, Nadia Marouani, Estelle Meyer, Christophe Rioux et Cécile Tlili2023 laureate for A simple dinner (Calmann-Lévy).
