The Mauritian author achieved a double victory by winning the Grand Prix du Roman Métis and the Prix du Roman Métis Readers of the city of Saint-Denis with her work The laughter of the goddesses. Yamen Manai won a special mention from the Prix du Roman Métis jury for Bel abîme.
This year it is therefore the Mauritian author Ananda Devi who wins both the Grand Prix du Roman Métis and the Prix du Roman Métis Readers of the city of Saint-Denis with her novel The laughter of the goddesses, published by Grasset. This novel has already won the Prix Fémina des Lycéens.
It happens for the Grand Prix du Roman Métis in Akli Tadjer, Of love and warand for the Prix du Roman Métis from the Readers of the City of Saint-Denis to Émilienne Malfatto, May the tiger complain about you.
The laughter of the goddesses takes place in northern India, in a poor city, where La Ruelle des prostitutes is located. There live Gowri, Kavita, Bholi, as well as Veena and Chinti, her ten-year-old daughter. If Veena fails to love her, the women of the neighborhood have taken her under their wing, especially Sadhana. She does not prostitute herself and lives on the sidelines, in a house occupied by the hijras, these women whom society fears and rejects because they were born in the bodies of men. After having a sex change and becoming a Guru in her community, Sadhana watches over Chinti. Their destiny changes when one of Veena’s clients Shivnath a Swami, a man of God who likes to be flattered in his temple, falls in love with Chinti and kidnaps her.
Anand Devi was born in 1957 in Mauritius to parents of Indian origin. Since childhood she has been passionate about writing and published her first collection of short stories at 19. Then various novels that received the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie, the Louis-Guilloux prize or the Ouest-France Étonnants Voyageurs prize. The laughter of the goddesses was written during the two confinements subsequent due to Pandemic of covid19.
Yamen Manai gets for beautiful abyss a special mention by the jury of the Prix du Roman Métis of the Readers of the City of Saint-Denis. beautiful abysspublished in 2021, it has received the Orange Prize for Books in Africa, the Micheline Prize, the Algue d’Or Prize, the Texto Prize 2022 Sorbonne Nouvelle University, the La Passerelle Prize, the Flaubert Prize and obtained the mention special edition of the Ahmed Prize Baba Prize for African Literature.
In this book, Yamen Manai chronicles the cruel awakening to the world of a teenager turned upside down by injustice. Luckily, she has Bella. Between them, an unconditional love and the experience of contempt in this society that puts the weak to shame even the dogs that are slaughtered “so that anger does not spread among the people”. But the anger is already there.
The Tunisian author won the Grand Prix du Roman Métis in 2017 with his novel The Burning Amas. According to the rules, he could no longer compete for the Grand Prix du Roman Métis but remained in the running for the Readers’ Prize of the city of Saint-Denis.
The Métis Grand Prix of Rome is an international literary prize of the city of Saint-Denis, created in 2010 and the Prix du Novel Métis from the readers of the city of Saint-Denis was created in 2017 to further engage the readers of the city of Saint-Denis. Both reward a French-language novel that has been published for less than a year and conveys the values of crossbreeding, humanism and diversity.
The awards ceremony takes place this year on December 6 at Château Morange at 18:00. The endowment is 5,000 euros per prize.
