The 2024 Renaudot prize goes to Gaël Faye

Five novels were in the running to receive the prestigious literary prize.

The novelist Gaël Faye, 42, won the Renaudot prize this Monday, November 4, for his novel “Jacaranda”, a look back at the genocide in Rwanda published by Grasset. He was preferred to Kamel Daoud for “Houris” (Grasset), who has just won the Goncourt prize, but also to Elisabeth Barillé for “Sisters and other species of life” (Arléa), Antoine Choplin for “the Barque de Masao” (Buchet Chastel) and Olivier Norek for “Winter Warriors” (Michel Lafon).

It is “a lot of joy, a big surprise”reacted Gaël Faye at the Drouant restaurant where the Renaudot and Goncourt prizes are traditionally awarded.

Gaël Faye had enjoyed immense bookstore success with “Petit Pays” (Grasset), sold 436,000 copies in large format and 1.1 million copies in paperback and the subject of an adaptation for the cinema and in comics. The man who is also a singer recounted the genocide seen by Gabriel, a young boy living in Burundi with his Rwandan mother and his French expatriate father. “Petit pays” reached the final of the Prix Goncourt, beaten by Leïla Slimani. He had taken his revenge with the high school students’ Goncourt.

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In “Jacaranda”, published in mid-August, Gaël Faye takes up the same themes but develops them in a larger construction, also more ambitious, according to our comrade Didier Jacob. Milan, the narrator, grew up in France, in Versailles to a French father and a Rwandan mother, but knows nothing of the genocide that ravaged his mother's country. When the family welcomes an injured boy home, Milan learns that he still has family in Rwanda and will continue to uncover the truth about this hidden country. “My mother’s past was a closed door”says the narrator. How can we understand the tragedy when the previous generation chose, in order to survive, to turn its back on its past? By leaving to explore the scene of the tragedy.

The essay prize was awarded to Sébastien Lapaque for his book “Echec et mate au paradis” (Actes Sud), an intimate investigation into the suicide of Stefan Zweig in Petrópolis, Brazil, on February 23, 1942, shortly after his visit to Georges Bernanos. Last year, it was Jean-Luc Barré for the first volume, of more than 900 pages, of an immense biography: “De Gaulle, a life. Nobody's Man (1890-1944)” (Grasset), who had been distinguished.

Please note: the Renaudot Prize jury is made up of Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, president for the 2024 edition, Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, secretary general, Jean-Noël Pancrazi, Franz-Olivier Giesbert, Dominique Bona, Patrick Besson, Frédéric Beigbeder, Cécile Guilbert, Stéphanie Janicot and Mohammed Aïssaoui.