NOVEL GRAND PRIX OF FRENCH ACADEMY AWARDED TO HEDI KADDOUR AND BOUALEM SANSAL

USPA NEWS - The Great Novel Prize of the French Academy has been awarded jointly to two winners: Hedi Kaddour for the "Preponderance" and Boualem Sansal for "2084", both published by Gallimard. The French Academy in one of the most beautiful ways celebrates centennial of the creation of the Grand Prix of Novel.

The Great Novel Prize 9Grand Prix of Novel) of the French Academy has been awarded jointly to two winners: Hédi Kaddour for the "Preponderance" and Boualem Sansal for "2084", both published by Gallimard. The French Academy in one of the most beautiful ways celebrates centennial of the creation of the Grand Prix du Roman, attributing it to two of the bright feathers of the Francophonie: the Franco-Tunisian Hedi Kaddour and Algerian Boualem Sansal.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hedi Kaddour is also a poet, translator and essayist, and goes back to scale in his third novel, the atmosphere of a city in North Africa but also from France and Germany in the early 1920. The writer helps the reader to catch the almost imperceptible to discern of the signs of a fragile world that is about to switch. During the French Protectorate era, the immemorial conflict between conservative forces and new aspirations is particularly worn by beautiful portraits of emancipated women, and the passion for books and movies. Boualem Sansal, meanwhile, masterfully describes a totalitarian country, theocratic, locked by a system that ruthlessly controls the minds and bodies completely enslaved. The historical markers have been cleared, crops are gone, there is only a single, impoverished language. The desire to see and understand by oneself can it stand? At what price ? The "Orwellian" fiction of this writer is committed to those, salutary, that warn against possible abuses - and existing ones - the real world.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This award is for me a special meaning, as I was in Algeria these last two days, for the inauguration of the 20th International Book Fair of Algiers inviting France the "guest of honor", for the first time . I extend my warmest congratulations to both novelists and their editor. "Fleur Pellerin French Minister of Culture.