Goncourt des lycéens won by Cameroonian author Djaïli Amadou Amal for his novel “Les Impatientes” published by Emmanuelle Collas. A book about the condition of women in the Sahel and the violence they can fall victim to.
It is a price that “represents a lot” for Djaïli Amadou Amal. During the presentation of the high school students in Goncourt, which was held at a video conference this year, Covid-19 demands that she calculate that if “the young people choose, choose this book, to make it their winner, in fact, this means hope for the future. This means that young people are sensitive and that there will therefore be a change for the world ”.
Married herself by force 17, she was moved that a jury of young readers were sensitive to the topics of “early and forced marriage” violence “Conjugal, physical or moral”.
A taboo subject
His work is a cover of a novel published in Cameroon 2017 under another title, Munyal, a Fulani word meaning patience and which she was already awarded last year. The announcement of this new award on Wednesday made booksellers proud, but they are still not very optimistic about the possible fallout for literature in the country.
In the oldest bookstore in Douala, Djaïli Amadou Amal’s books are lined up on the shelves at the back of the store, reports our special correspondent,Jeanne Richard. The boss makes a point of offering them to readers. And it is a real pleasure to learn that Goncourt from high school students is attributed to the Cameroonian author: “This is very good news, for sure. But Cameroonians do not read because books are still very expensive for them. Cameroonian writers, we can not say that we sell many of them, but we must have them “.
A little further in the city center, Judith Egoume Ombang is also a bookseller, proud of this award but not very optimistic about the repercussions in the country: “It may be a nationalist feeling that she is a Cameroonian. But how many will read it? Very little. Literature, literature … it is at this base that we must begin to introduce children to reading ”. In addition, themes addressed in the novel are quite taboo in the country: “It is precisely an opportunity to be informed. But for that, you have to read, believes the bookseller who sells more textbooks and books for work than novels.
“We are in something that is specific to our experience as a woman”
This is also one of the goals of the book: to break taboos. “There are many levels of reading in this book and there is this level of reading that is very interesting, which is a real political gesture that must be heard more than ever,” appreciates Célia Sadaï, critic and literary columnist. . “I read it like a woman. And in fact, what is interesting to read is the resonances that are there. There is a lot of rather banal violence that we identify and we say to ourselves “Ah, that, I have already experienced it, I have already suffered it, but I have never called it violence”. There is something very universal that really resonates, very reasoning and vibrating in this story, in this way of talking about women, and that completely transcends the context in Cameroon, of a Fulani and Muslim tradition, which is the background to the heroine’s environment. And there we are really in something that is specific to our experience as a woman, she says.
If his book goes beyond the borders of Cameroon, the rest of the world is still very much bound and maintains a strong relationship with his homeland. She also wanted to condemn the abuses taking place there. “I also cannot say a word and remember that young people and women in northern Cameroon are being killed every day by the atrocities of Boko Haram,” she explained in her speech.
I hope to be the voice that will raise awareness and advocate for changing the status of women and the education of young people.
Djaïli Amadou Amal won the Goncourt Prize for high school students with “Les impatientes”
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