Dany Laferrière
Dany Laferrière (born April 13, 1953 in Port-au-Prince , Haiti ) is a Haitian writer. In 2009 he received the Prix Médicis for his novel L'énigme du retour .
On December 12, 2013 he was elected to the Académie française. He was officially admitted there on May 28, 2015 and gave his inaugural address. He is the second ever admitted member (after Julien Green in 1971/72) who was never a French citizen.
Life
Dany Laferrière was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, in 1953. He grew up in the small town of Petit-Goâve with his grandmother, to whom he would later dedicate two novels. Laferrière initially worked as a journalist until he emigrated to Montréal in 1976 . There he worked, among other things, as a factory worker before he published his first novel.
In January 2010, just a week after the earthquake in Haiti, he was voted “Personality of the Year 2009” by Radio Canada and the newspaper La Presse. He tells what he saw and how he experienced the earthquake in his book Tout bouge autour de moi . The book pays homage to the dignity of Haitians.
Laferrière is a Canadian citizen and lives in Paris.
Literary work
In 1985 his first novel was published under the title Comment faire l'amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer (German: The art of sleeping with a negro without getting tired ). As a result, Laferrière published ten other novels. Laferrière refused to be classified as a “writer in exile”: it is not what he left behind in Haiti that is the main theme of his early works, which were mainly created in Montréal, but rather the current life in this city. Within twenty-five years he wrote nearly twenty books, mostly inspired by his life story: his so-called "American Autobiography". Laferrière always protested against being classified as an author in a category, for example as an "ethnic writer". With his books he wants to address global issues that concern everyone: life in an unjust world and the coexistence of different cultures.
Honors
Dany Laferrière has received numerous awards for his work.
- 1991 - Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe for L'Odeur du café
- 1993 - Prix Edgar-Lespérance
- 2009 - Prix Médicis for L'Énigme du retour
- 2009 - Grand Prix du livre de Montréal
- 2010 - "Personnalité de l'année 2009" (La Presse / Radio-Canada)
- 2010 - Grand Prix Metropolis bleu, Grand Prix littéraire international Metropolis bleu
- 2010 - Honorary doctorate from the Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR)
- 2013 - Elected to the Académie Française
- 2014 - International Literature Prize - House of World Cultures for The Riddle of Return , together with the translator Beate Thill
bibliography
Novels and short stories
- Comment faire l'amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer , VLB Éditeur, Montréal 1985; Serpent à Plumes, Paris 1999, ISBN 9782842611460
- Éroshima . VLB Éditeur, Montréal 1987, ISBN 9782892951455
- L'Odeur du café . VLB Éditeur, Montréal 1991; Éditions du Rocher, 2011, ISBN 9782268072548
- Le goût des jeunes filles , VLB Éditeur, Montréal 1992 (version modified by the author: Grasset, 2005, ISBN 9782246686613 ).
- Cette grenade dans la main du jeune Nègre est-elle une arme ou un fruit? VLB Éditeur, Montréal 1993 (version modified by the author: Serpent à Plumes, 2003, ISBN 9782842614492 )
- Pays sans chapeau . Lanctôt, Outremont 1996; Boréal Compact, Montréal 2006, ISBN 9782842612696
- La Chair du maître . Lanctôt, Outremont 1997; Serpent à Plumes, 2000, ISBN 9782842612313
- Le Charme des après-midi sans fin . Lanctôt, Outremont 1997; Boréal Compact, Montréal 2010, ISBN 9782842611545
- Le Cri des oiseaux fous . Lanctôt, Outremont 2000; Boréal "Compact", Montréal 2010, ISBN 9782842613860
- Vers le sud . Boréal, Montréal 2006 (nominated for the Prix Renaudot ), ISBN 9782246703112
Novels in German translation
- Übers. Beate Thill: The riddle of the return. Das Wunderhorn , Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-3-88423-426-6 (= L'Énigme du retour. Boréal, Montréal 2009; Boréal "Compact", 2010; Grasset, Paris 2009)
- Translator. Beate Thill: Diary of a writer in pajamas. Das Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 2015, ISBN 978-3-88423-493-8
- Übers. Beate Thill: The art of loving a black man without getting tired. Das Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 2017, ISBN 978-3-88423-568-3 .
various
- Je suis fatigué . Lanctôt, Outremont 2001 (extended edition 2005 ISBN 9782892952124 )
- Les années 1980 dans ma vieille Ford . Mémoire d'encrier, Montréal 2005 ISBN 9782923153490
- Je suis fou de Vava . Éditions de la Bagnole, Montréal 2006 ISBN 9782923342085
- La fête des morts , Éditions de la Bagnole, 2008 ISBN 9782923342276
- Je suis un écrivain japonais . Boréal, Montréal 2008; Boréal "Compact", 2009 ISBN 9782246718017
- Tout bouge near moi. Mémoire d'encrier, Montréal 2010; Grasset, Paris 2011, ISBN 9782246777311
- L'Art presque perdu de ne rien faire . Boréal, Montréal 2011, ISBN 9782764621356
- Chroniques de la dérive douce. Grasset, Paris 2012, ISBN 9782246789116
Interviews
- J'écris comme je vis (with Bernard Magnier), Lanctôt Éditeur, Outremont 2000; Boréal "Compact", 2010
- Conversations with Dany Laferrière . Interviews with Ghila Sroka, Éditions de la Parole Métèque, Montréal 2010
Scripts
- Comment conquérir l'Amérique en une nuit . Screenplay by Dany Laferrière, published in 2004 by Lanctôt and 2010 by Boréal. In 2004 Dany Laferrière directed the film.
- Le Goût des jeunes filles , directed by John L'Écuyer, 2004
filming
The film in the south (original title: Vers le sud ) by Laurent Cantet with Charlotte Rampling was influenced by the novellas of the writer Dany Laferrière.
Web links
- Literature by and about Dany Laferrière in the catalog of the German National Library
- Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
- Dany Laferrière in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- literaturfestival.com , accessed November 22, 2012
- Laferrière , entry in Canadian Writers (French) at Athabasca University , by Joseph J. Pivato (in English)
- Laferrière's complete works, presented by Jennifer Dummer, Berlin, at the Goethe-Institut Canada, June 2016 (in German)
- Dany Laferrière ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia .
- The author in the database Auteurs contemporains , 2020, French.
Individual evidence
- ^ Dany Laferrière élu à l'Académie française
- ↑ www.academie-francaise.fr
- ↑ www.academie-francaise.fr
- ↑ arte.tv: The Haitian author Dany Laferrière tells the tragedy in a book ( memento of July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on November 22, 2012
- ↑ Claudia Kramatschek: Alienation and Contemplation . A prose poem by the Haitian Dany Laferrière . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , March 11, 2014.
- ↑ Cornelius Wüllenkemper: Nation and Imagination. Haiti's writers are the pride of the troubled island republic. Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 6, 2017, p. 14
- ^ Thill in the translator database of the VdÜ , 2018
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Laferrière, Dany |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Kléber, Windson (maiden name) |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Haitian writer |
DATE OF BIRTH | April 13, 1953 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Port-au-Prince , Haiti |