The Renaudot Prize has just been awarded to the Rwandan Scholastique Mukasonga for «Notre-Dame du Nil» (Gallimard). I am sincerely delighted with this choice, which rewards the first novel by an author who survived the dark Tutsi massacre.
Refugee in France in 1992, she will first deliver two autobiographical stories to
following the violent loss of his entire family in 1994 (Inyenci or
cockroaches” and “barefoot woman” in honour of her mother). But that’s
«Notre-Dame du Nil», a frightening closed door in a high school for young people
girls, who really consecrate her as a novelist in the eyes of the world.
I wish Scholastique Mukasonga, fourth award-winning African author
by the Renaudot Prize, to continue to chart its course in literature. We
need to be open to other forms of sensitivity, other sources
of inspiration from the vast world.