- Khalid Lyamlahy – Evocation d’un mémorial à Venise
- Khalid Lyamlahy – Un roman étranger
- Valérie Cadignan – L’enfant du morne
- Olivier Ahmad Castagnède – Secrète Lalibela
- Elgas – Un dieu et des moeurs
- Véronique Kanor – Combien de solitudes…
- Jean-Baptiste Lanne – Rives d’où je vous veille
Khalid Lyamlahy – Evocation d’un mémorial à Venise
– Novel –
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Summary: Evocation d’un memorial à Venise (“Evocation of a Memorial in Venice”) by Khalid Lyamlahy is a subtle and moving novel that takes as its starting point the story of Pateh Sabally, a Gambian refugee who drowned in the Grand Canal in Venice in January 2017. The narrator, a Moroccan writer, is deeply affected by Pateh’s death and decides years later to go to Venice to understand the reasons behind this tragic event. The book, composed of fragments, is notably influenced by the work of Aimé Césaire (Moi laminaire, Les armes miraculeuses), and alternates between the narrator’s quest and a reconstitution of Pateh’s youth in Gambia until his last journey by train from Milan to Venice. |
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Publication: Présence Africaine, 2023 Bio: Khalid Lyamlahy was born in 1986 in Rabat (Morocco). A former civil Engineer, he holds a PhD in French & Francophone studies from Oxford University. He is currently Assistant Professor in Francophone Literature at the University of Chicago. Lyamlahy contributes to several literary magazines & academic journals. He already published a first novel, A Foreign Novel (Présence Africaine, 2017) his brilliant first novel, dealt with a three-sided quest (love, residence permit & writing). Evocation d’un mémorial à Venise is currently selected for the shortlist of the Alain Spiess Second Novel Award and has also earned a place in the Young Alain Spiess Award selection. Link to the book on Présence Africaine: Here Rights inquiries: Here |
© Khalid Lyamlahy |
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Khalid Lyamlahy – Un roman étranger
– Debut Novel –
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Summary: The narrator, a foreigner on whom almost nothing is known, not even the first name, is exiled in an anonymous European capital. He wanders accross this large, impersonal, grey, cold city, with a cinema, a post-office, various bars and a prefecture, going from one inhospitable place to another, depending of the necessities guiding him. He alternatively struggles to establish a romantic relationship with a young woman; to have his residence permit renewed – uncompromising descriptions of the applicants parked in front of the Prefecture, depressing offices, the staff’s indifference, merciless enumerations and lists of documents to be provided, with the precision of an entomologist-; and, above all, to write his first novel. Within an environment that becomes increasingly hostile to him and repetitive, he takes refuge in writing and continues to believe in a possibility of reconstruction and artistic accomplishment. The title of the novel is both a reference to Camus’ The Stranger and a way to address the classification of books in France between “French” literature and another one called “Foreign Literature”. According to Lyamlahy: “My Foreign Novel is written in French, but is also “foreign” because of its narrator, its universe, its residence permit remain foreign, marginalized”. |
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Publication: Présence Africaine, 2017 Bio: Khalid Lyamlahy was born in 1986 in Rabat (Morocco). A former civil Engineer, he holds a PhD in French & Francophone studies from Oxford University. He is currently Assistant Professor in Francophone Literature at the University of Chicago. Lyamlahy contributes to several literary magazines & academic journals. A Foreign Novel is his first novel. His second novel will be published by Présence Africaine in 2023. Link to the book on Présence Africaine: Here Rights inquiries: Here |
© Khalid Lyamlahy |
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Valérie Cadignan – L’enfant du Morne
– Novel –
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Summary: Valérie Cadignan unveils the journey and intimate struggle of her heroine, Zélie, through the narratives of several characters. It’s Ash Wednesday. This woman, disguised as a she-devil, is interred alive at the depths of a vault in the Levée cemetery in Fort-de-France. Alongside her lies a man, half-naked. Haunted by the secrets of her childhood, it is only by confronting formidable forces, the weight of beliefs, and the unspoken truths of her family history that she can hope to emerge victorious. A polyphonic novel. Award: Prix Ethiophile 2022 |
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Publication: Présence Africaine, 2021 Bio: Valérie Cadignan was born in 1972 in Martinique where she lived until she graduated. Since 1998, she has been a magistrate and currently exercises her functions in metropolitan France. Link to the book on Présence Africaine: Here Rights inquiries: Here |
© Valérie Cadignan |
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Olivier Ahmad Castagnède – Secrète Lalibela
– Novel –
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Publication: Présence Africaine, 2021 Bio: Olivier Ahmad Castaignède was born in Metz in 1973 and has lived in Singapore for twenty years. The polytechnic trained first as an embassy consultant before taking on various management positions in technology companies based in Asia. Since 2015, he has devoted himself mainly to writing and travelling, with a passion for Africa and Ethiopia in particular. Link to the book on Présence Africaine: Here Rights inquiries: Here |
© Olivier Ahmad Castagnède |
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– Travelogue – Portrait –
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Summary: “We suspect very little of the providence that misery offers.” It is through this terrible opening that we enter these atypical travelogues. The author outlines his reunion with Senegal after a long period far away. Delusions, pain, anger and sensitivity dominate the narration. He describes a country which, according to him, is wounded by immobility and complacency, supported by two pillars: tradition and religion. His gaze, sharpened with hindsight, illuminates and questions the ills of his country: life cut short by arbitrary death, excision, fatalism, mild fanaticism, homophobia, levirate… The book analyzes in particular the painful question of child trafficking, symptomatic ravages of religion excesses. He chants the beautifulnell and benevolent of Islam in his childhood, but pities and overwhelms his gravediggers. Here is an original story: 15 nights, 15 portraits an indictment through which the author auscultates and accuses uncompromisingly the taboos and the central issues of Senegalese society. Written in a crude and ironic style, Un Dieu et des Moeurs is an extremely courageous and sensitive book that mirrors a country and a continent. Elgas’ reflections are not here to please every readers, although they require awareness, making this book an urgent reminder. |
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Publication: Présence Africaine, 2015 Bio: Elgas is a journalist and doctoral student at the University of Caen in Normandy. Born in Saint-Louis du Senegal in 1988, he grew up in Ziguinchor. A graduate in communication and political science, his research focuses on giving in Africa. In his writings, he strives to describe Africa unvarnished and without complacency. Un dieu et des moeurs is his first book. Link to the book on Présence Africaine: Here Rights inquiries: Here |
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© Elgas
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Véronique Kanor – Combien de solitudes…
– Poetry –
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Summary: There are states that take you not to the end but to the core of yourself. States that tear your skin apart and throw you into intimately dark, hostile places. Then, you must walk through these places and accept. An old Creole saying goes, “a remedy is effective only if one accepts the pain.” No other choice, but to traverse the depths to find the right way out. This is the story of a place where a troubled self wanders, all miserable from a love sorrow. In her descent, this woman unpacking her baggage falls exactly where she didn’t want to go: in the island of her parents, Martinique. It is the parallel story of this return to the prenatal homeland. Of this place that must also be crossed. Crossing the pains: aberrations, assimilations, disappointed hopes, struggles for emancipation, hope constantly buried. Martinique, in the end, what is it: a large supermarket, an open wound, a vacant lot, a paradise in a kit, a land to conquer? Véronique Kanor tells her self and her island in a battered feminine way. In sharp poetry, she dissects loneliness, exile, the return to the homeland, and to love. Her gaze lingers on every man’s skin and attempts to take on one. The collection was awarded the Prix Ethiophile 2018. |
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Publication: Présence Africaine, 2013 Bio: Véronique Kanor worked in the field of media for a long time before taking an artistic path. From a decolonial perspective, she explores Afro-Caribbean lands through photography, video, writing, and stage performances. Among her achievements are three short films on Antillean identity (La Noiraude, C’est qui l’homme, and La femme qui passe), around ten radio and television documentaries on resistance, and a mobile Afromaton that she sets up in various locations to capture Afro-diasporic black identities on film. She typically stages her texts through performances of pictdub poetry. Link to the book on Présence Africaine: Here Rights inquiries: Here |
© Présence Africaine |
Jean-Baptiste Lanne – Rives d’où je vous veille
– Debut Novel –
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Summary: After an absence of four years, Gabriel returns to Nairobi to find two women, Mbonoko and Nancy Gloria, mythical figures in the popular neighborhoods of the Kenyan capital. Their devouring ambition has driven them to establish a famous radio, become leaders, travel across the Atlantic, raise fighting cocks, and lead the Great Nubian-Luhya War of the autumn of 2004. Accompanied by a young taxi driver, Gabriel traces their whereabouts and obtains the opportunity to collect their stories from them. But the interviews do not go as planned. The words overflow. Gradually, a hallucinated city unfolds before his eyes. It will not leave him anymore. This otherworldly city that takes hold of him pursues him on boulevards, in the back of taxis, even in the empty corridors of his small hotel; it is the city of the oppressed and of the astonishment, the city of the disenchantment, whose history has never been taken seriously. |
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Publication: Présence Africaine, 2023 Bio: Jean-Baptiste Lanne was born in 1989. A geographer by training, he specialized in the study of urban lives in East Africa, conducting investigations, particularly among night watchers. This work led him to undertake extended research stays in Kenya, especially in Nairobi. He lives in Paris. Rives d’où je vous veille is his first novel. Link to the book on Présence Africaine: Here Rights inquiries: Here |
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