Gaël Faye: a voice for a (hi)story that demands to be told 

Gaël Faye is a Franco-Rwandan singer-songwriter, rapper and writer, born in 1982 in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, a small country in the south of Rwanda between DRC and Tanzania. His father is French, and his mother, originally from Rwanda, took refuge in Burundi after the first waves of persecution against the Tutsi following the 1959 revolution led by the Hutu. In 1993, civil war broke out in Burundi, followed by the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi in 1994 leading him to flee the country for France at the age of thirteen. 

He is best known for his first novel Petit Pays (Small Country) published in 2016. The novel won the “Prix Goncourt des lycéens”, sold over a million copies and has been translated in 40 languages, becoming a true literary success. 

Petit Pays is semi-autobiographical and tells the story of a ten-year-old boy living in an expatriate neighborhood in Burundi in 1992, with his Rwandan mother, French father and little sister. At first, the novel paints a picture of a boy’s joyful childhood but this innocence is soon disrupted by the brutal events that will ravage his “small country”. 

The novel was later adapted into a movie directed by Eric Barbier. 

Jacaranda: a new novel already highly acclaimed 

In this literary season, Jacaranda, Gaël Faye’s new novel, has made an impressive debut in bookstores. 

Gaël Faye continues to explore the tragedy experienced by his homeland: the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi. But this time, he’s also interested in the aftermath. 

The novel tells the story of Milan, a young boy born of a French father and a Rwandan mother, who lives in Versailles near Paris and who knows little about his mother’s country. At its core, it’s the story of a mother who wishes to forget about her country and a son who wants to know more. It’s about how silence within a family and a country can become deafening. Indeed, the silence of trauma survivors is meant to protect both themselves and future generations, but it often leads to anxiety for the latter.  

The novel follows four generations, exploring the lives of both the children of survivors and the children of perpetrators, weaving a powerful narrative about Rwanda, a haunted country in the process of rebuilding itself. It’s a story about memory and healing.  

It’s interesting to know that for the author, writing about such a sensitive topic remains a challenging process as breaking the silence surrounding these events is still a cultural taboo. Besides, for Gaël Faye, Jacaranda (which is a tree with mauve flowers that mirror the color of the book cover), is a metaphor for Rwanda that embodies themes of protection, secrecy, and the concept of transmission. 

Since Tuesday, October 1st, the list of the novels running for the Goncourt Prize went from 16 to 8. Jacaranda is still part of it. The four finalists will be selected on October 22nd and the winner will be announced on November 4th. 

Meet the author 

For those looking to have a complete experience around the novel Jacaranda, Gaël Faye has organized a series of events to celebrate the book’s release. In Nantes, the event will take place on October 17th. The Coiffard bookstore is in charge of the organization. It will be a musical reading of selected extracts of the novel accompanied by the guitarist Samuel Kamanzi at “Théâtre 100 Noms” followed by a book signing session in the restaurant “Squadra”. Unfortunately, tickets for the event are already sold out, but you still have a chance to win the last two tickets on Théâtre 100 Noms’ Instagram page. 

Several other events will be held in different cities, so if you’re interested, you may still be able to find a spot elsewhere. 

Elsa Dufour