Books on postcolonial violence win France's leading literary awards

Novels about surviving wide-scale violence in Algeria and Rwanda won France's two most important literary prizes yesterday, with the titles hailed as groundbreaking French-language narratives about younger generations coming to terms with conflict in post-colonial societies.

- Angelique Chrisafis

The French-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud won France's Goncourt literary prize for his novel, Houris, about a young woman scarred by the violence of Algeria's civil war in the 1990s. The writer and hip-hop artist Gaël Faye won the Renaudot prize for his best-selling novel, Jacaranda, about young people navigating the legacy of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said the writers showed how the French language can evoke "beauty, tragedy and the universal".

Daoud's powerful and shocking novel was praised by the Goncourt jury for its tragic "lyricism." A fictional account of a young woman who was mutilated aged five during the civil war, the book asks how Algerian society can rebuild itself after the 10-year conflict. Between 1991 and 2002, clashes between the Algerian government and Islamist groups resulted in up to 200,000 deaths, while thousands more disappeared.

Daoud is the first Algerian novelist to win France's top literary prize.