Gaël Faye Renaudot Prize 2024 for “Jacaranda”

At 42, Gaël Faye won the Renaudot for his second novel, Jacarandapublished by Grasset, in which he once again evokes the genocide in Rwanda. He was one of the favorites of Goncourt 2024 which was finally awarded to Kamel Daoud for Hourispublished by Gallimard.

JacarandaGaël Faye’s favorite word, is the name of this majestic tree, with purple flowers in which Stella, a child born after the genocide, likes to take refuge. In JacarandaGaël Faye explores silence. That of a mother towards her son, Milan, who grew up in Versailles with his French father and his Rwandan mother. He is the one who speaks to us throughout the novel. He was 12 years old during the 1994 genocide and watched the images on the television news, without the slightest comment from his mother Venancia. One evening, Claude, a young teenager of the same age, arrives at his house, accompanied by Venancia. He’s a cousin, she answers her son’s questions. Claude, a genocide survivor, stays for a few months before leaving, as suddenly as he arrived. A heartbreak for Milan. Until four years later, the teenager who still knows nothing about his origins, the country or his mother’s family, went to Rwanda for the first time. What followed were years of comings and goings, sometimes without return, where the history of Milan and that of Rwanda were intertwined, traced through several generations. Gaël Faye evokes the genocide, notably through a moving testimony from one of his characters. But also its consequences on the youngest, through Stella, who lives with the weight of “events” as it has long been common to say, which she has not yet experienced. The silence of his mother is that of all survivors. Gaël Faye says he is aware here of “break the tacit pact of this silence”. Because although survivors testify every year during the three months of commemorations of the genocide, it is not common to speak within families. Jacaranda it is also the reconciliation of an entire people, and the long road towards it, sometimes tortured and tortuous.

Already awarded the Goncourt des lycéens in 2016

In 2016, Gaël Faye’s first novel, Small Countryhad already been crowned with success. Finalist of the Goncourt, the Franco-Rwandan had notably obtained the Goncourt prize for high school students. His book has been translated into around forty languages, adapted for cinema, and sold nearly 1.5 million copies. So, for his second novel, Gaël Faye wanted to write about “something else” that the genocide and had started a novel about a rock singer. But Jacaranda imposed himself on him, he said. Without being a sequel, his two novels are linked, through characters. But in Small Countrya teenager testifies to the war in Burundi and the genocide in Rwanda which he experiences directly. Gaël Faye draws on his own history, he who was born and raised in Burundi, to a Rwandan refugee mother and a French father, before his exile to France in 1995.
Exile, war, crossbreeding are themes which also inspire the artist Gaël Faye because his pen is also illustrated in his songs. In 2018, Gaël Faye – the rapper – won the Victoire de la musique for scene revelation.