Gaël Faye, Renaudot prize for his novel “Jacaranda”

The novelist Gaël Faye, who was one of the favorites for the Goncourt, was awarded the Renaudot prize on Monday for his second novel “Jacaranda”, on the reconstruction of Rwanda after the 1994 genocide.

While in the first “Little Country”, the 2016 Goncourt high school prize and huge bookstore success, the author took the point of view of a boy who grew up in Burundi, this time the narrator grew up in France, in Versailles. , of a French father and a Rwandan mother.

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This young man, Milan, will discover Kigali, the omnipresence of the memory of the genocide, and members of his family.

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“A lot of joy”

It’s “a lot of joy, a big surprise,” reacted Gaël Faye at the Drouant restaurant, where the Renaudot and Goncourt prizes are traditionally awarded, awarded Monday to the Franco-Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud for his novel “Houris” (ed. Gallimard ), on “the black decade” in Algeria.

A 42-year-old Franco-Rwandan, Gaël Faye has an atypical profile in the French literary landscape: between slam, music and literature, he is an artist with multiple talents, whose pen is as alert as his themes are serious.

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