Tomorrow, Wednesday at 7.30 pm, the Instituto Francés of Madrid presents the latest book by Gaël Faye, El Jacarandá, Premio Renaudot 2024, the literary novel of the rentrée in France, with more than 350,000 copies sold in two months.
Composer and performer of great charisma, Gaël Faye burst onto the literary scene with Petit pays, a first opera translated into forty languages with which he captivated more than two million readers. Eight years later, Faye has once again captivated audiences and critics with El jacarandá, a vibrant and sensitive novel that tells the terrible story of a country that is trying to rebuild itself, from four generations of a Rwandan family.
Set in Versales, 1994, the novel tells how, although he grows up in a happy environment, little Milan suffers from his mother’s stubborn silence about his origins and his family. This ignorance will only be gradually diluted, first with the images of the genocide and then with the arrival of the young and badly injured Claude, whom they will welcome for a few days. Four years later, when Milan visits Rwanda for the first time with his mother, his stay there will be such a profound experience that it will change his life forever. From that moment on, and over the course of two decades and successive returns, Milan will recount «his Rwanda» with a touching sincerity: the colonial past, the still open wounds of conflict and reconciliation, but also the animated veils in the capital, new friends and escapades to Lake Kivu; and in Kigali she will one day meet Stella, a girl who tries to unravel family secrets in the shade of a jacaranda tree capable of blooming after the storm.
Woven from real events, El Jacarandá tells the emotional story of a country that tries to dialogue and forgive. With great sensitivity and infinite elegance, Gaël Faye has written a hymn to life that highlights the strength of friendship and the resilience of human beings.
Pages: 256
Publisher: Salamandra
Binding: Soft cover
ISBN: 9788410340497
RPP: 19,95 euros
