The jury of the Goncourt Prize finally surprised everyone with the list of works nominated for this year’s award, which has led to the question of whether Goncourt, considered the most prestigious and prestigious French literary prize, will go to an Arab writer this year. , particularly after previous Arab writers such as Tahar Ben Jelloun in 1987, Amin Maalouf in 1993 and Leila Slimani in 2016.
Sabeel Ghassoub, 34, was born in Paris to the Lebanese poet Caesar Ghassoub, who appears in the novel as the protagonist with his wife Hanan.
His novel nominated for Goncourt is the third after “The Jewish Nose” and “Beirut in Brackets”. Ghossoub belongs to the thirtieth generation born at the end of the Lebanese civil war, in his works Ghossoub follows the crises of this generation, most of whose children have emigrated, and many of them are still suffering multiple crises due to this alienation in relation to the identity and belonging As a way to understand his identity and view his family history.
“I didn’t expect it at all. I was very moved, I wrote this novel to honor my father, as a kind of revenge for war and wars and an often unjust life, “Ghossoub said in an interview with the Lebanese newspaper L’Orient-Le Jour, after announcing the nomination of his novel for Goncourt’s long list.
in the novel; The Arab Paris of the Eighties manifests itself in its artists, art galleries, newspapers and cafes, through Cesare, the poet who is passionate about the Arabic language and enthusiastic of the left, and through his relationship with tenderness, the narrator tells the reasons and contradictions of him. Their shattered dreams and the pain of their war experience are also brought to light, while the various murders and massacres that characterized the dark years of the civil war are evoked, and the unbearable waiting behind the phones “do not break” for those who hope. to be reassured to receive news about loved ones.
But soon the curse of war haunts Lebanese expatriates, as the war penetrates Paris: bombs explode, attacks are launched, and words like “Palestine” and “armed organization” make the French news. Over the years, political conflict continues to interfere and Lebanon and its capital become another place in daily life for the storyteller, a familiar haunt of his dreams, so they must maintain that bond at all costs. In his novel, Ghossoub reveals the difficulty of the dream of returning to his homeland after exile while trying to escape the war. The return involves confrontation with a homeland that has been changed by the war. It is difficult to identify it and describe it as the homeland as it was before the war, which pushes everyone to make a more difficult choice, which is to stay in Paris and try to rebuild their imagined Lebanon there, so that Paris becomes a new Beirut on the shores for them. of the Seine, embodying at the same time an extended emotional narrative about family, immigration and what remains of our origins.
Goncourt’s long list of 15 novels was also criticized for excluding Virginie Depante’s “Dear Fool,” which critics have described as the queen of the current French literary season due to its sales of over 65,000 copies and critical acclaim. positive of critics and readers alike. Goncourt’s committee had returned Debant’s exclusion because she had been a former award jury member for four consecutive years before she resigned in early 2020 to devote herself to writing, as the committee considered her selection among the nominees it would be “morally unacceptable,” according to Didier Decoin, president of Goncourt.
The award changed some rules for this year’s edition, banning the works of spouses, companions or close relatives of jury members, following the 2021 revelation of the relationship between jury member Camille Lorenz and author Francois Nudelman. It also prevented jury members who hold a literary and journalistic position in one of the media from reviewing works that appear on the award lists in the newspapers and media they work for. While these rules have come to preserve the award’s impartiality and reputation in the face of any criticism, the main criticism and accusation it still faces is its clear bias towards the major publishing houses that occupy a large part of the nomination lists and winners in exchange for the poor representation of small and independent publishing houses, and Goncourt still fails to confront this criticism, which has prompted some in the publishing industry to describe it as a “closed club” for large publishing houses, and the winner of the award it should be announced on November 3
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