David Diop (writer, 1966)

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David Diop (born February 24, 1966 in Paris ) is a French - Senegalese writer and literary scholar. International fame as a novelist earned him his second, multiple award-winning work, Frère d'âme (2018).

Life

Childhood, education and teaching

The son of a French mother and Senegalese father was born in Paris but grew up in Senegal. There he also attended elementary and secondary school. Diop returned to France for further studies. He studied in Toulouse and Paris and received his doctorate from the Sorbonne in 18th century French literature.

Since 1998 Diop has been working as a lecturer at the University of Pau . There he teaches literature of the 18th century and French-language African literature. Since 2009 Diop has also headed a research group (GRREA 17/18) that deals with the European colonization of Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 2014 he obtained the habilitation à diriger des recherches (HDR), which is considered the central qualification for admission to a professorship in France.

Work as a writer

In parallel to his teaching activity, Diop has so far published two historical novels. His debut novel 1889, l'attraction universelle , published in 2012, focuses on a Senegalese delegation whose trip to the Paris World's Fair in 1889 ends miserably in a circus in Bordeaux .

Diop's second novel, Frère d'âme (English title: Our blood is black at night ; . "Brothers in Arms"), which was published in 2018 by the renowned publisher Éditions du Seuil . The book to which a. A quote from the Senegalese author Cheikh Hamidou Kane is prefixed, he also called it his "true first novel". The work was inspired by Diop's great-grandfather, who, as one of around 135,000 Senegalese “tirailleurs” fought on the side of the French troops in World War I , but never spoke about his experiences. 30,000 of them were killed.

Frère d'âme got the only plant in the final selection of the four major French literary prizes Prix Goncourt , Renaudot , Prix Femina and Prix Médicis and also led the critics' survey of the trade magazine Livres Hebdo by a wide margin, but only has been Prix Goncourt of lycéens awarded . The book tells the story of the two Senegalese childhood friends Alfa Ndyaye and Mademba Diop from the country, who fought as riflemen on the side of the French troops against German soldiers in the First World War . While Mademba dies in the brutal trench warfare in Lorraine , Alfa goes mad and, following a cruel ritual, begins to chop off the hands of the defeated German enemy and take them with him as spoils of war. If Alfa is initially celebrated as a hero by his French comrades, he begins to frighten them off with every further act. When writing, Diop first concentrated on the character of Alfa, who also acts as the narrator in the book, and lives in a double exile: “He came to an absolutely foreign country and also to a country that did not correspond to what it was should be, that is, instead of feeding the people, a land of death, ”said Diop.

Muslim section of the Saint-Acheul military cemetery near Amiens . In the foreground the grave of a soldier of the 45th Senegalese Rifle Regiment (45e RTS) who fell during the Battle of the Somme .

Valérie Marin La Meslée ( Le Point ) praised Diop's novel as one of the most beautiful of the literary year and as a “universal fable”. Gladys Marivat ( Le Monde ) drew comparisons with the 2013 Goncourt Prize winner, Au revoir là-haut by Pierre Lemaitre . She praised Frère d'âme as a “wonderful novel about the First World War”, highlighted Diop's filigree language and the ambiguous main character in the tradition of the “comedy of wildness” (“la comédie de la sauvagerie”). Diop himself referred to the oral culture of the soldiers from West Africa and the few written records from this time. That is why it was so important to him to write a novel about these people who had not previously appeared in literature. Deutschlandfunk Kultur interpreted Frère d'âme as not a direct accusation against the colonial power France and referred to the brutality of the war described in the book. The 176-page anti-war novel is "structured like a song, like a [sic] litany, a monologue in which the protagonist writes his [sic] fear from his soul". When the Prix Goncourt was awarded, Frère d'âme was one of the top bestsellers in France. Translations into 13 languages ​​are to follow by mid-2021. Diops Roman has received other prizes abroad, including the Premio Strega Europeo (2019), the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2020) and the International Booker Prize (2021).

More than 90 years earlier, Bakary Diallo, an illiterate man from Mali, had published his war memories as a tirailleur sénégalais with outside help. Since then, the history of the Senegalese riflemen has been more an occasion for patriotic memories in France than for historical or literary reappraisal.

Works

Novels

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Notice de personne at bnf.fr (French; accessed December 29, 2019).
  2. ^ A b Sian Cain: David Diop wins International Booker for 'frightening' At Night All Blood Is Black . In: theguardian.com, June 2, 2021 (accessed June 2, 2021).
  3. ↑ a b Profile of David Diop on LinkedIn (French; accessed November 6, 2018).
  4. ^ A b "Prix Goncourt": The favorites for France's most important literary prize . In: deutschlandfunkkultur.de, November 6, 2018 (accessed November 6, 2018).
  5. ^ A b Rencontre avec la grande révélation de la rentrée littéraire, David Diop . In: lesinrocks.com, October 30, 2018 (accessed November 7, 2018).
  6. ^ Femina, Médicis, Goncourt et Renaudot: c'est la semaine des prix littéraires . In: sudouest.fr, November 5, 2018 (accessed November 6, 2018).
  7. ↑ Le Prix Goncourt des lycéens: L'édition 2018 . In: education.gouv.fr (accessed January 20, 2019).
  8. ^ Valérie Marin La Meslé: Prix ​​littéraires: mais qui est David Diop? . In: lepoint.fr, November 5, 2018 (accessed November 6, 2018).
  9. ↑ Gladys Marivat: Le désespoir du tirailleur au fin fond de la tranchée . In: Le Monde , September 14, 2018, Le Monde des Livres section , p. 4.
  10. ^ "Prix Goncourt": The favorites for France's most important literary prize . In: deutschlandfunkkultur.de, November 6, 2018, audio recording 2:15 min ff. (Accessed on November 6, 2018).
  11. ↑ The price candidate is also convincing in terms of sales , buchreport.de, November 28, 2018, accessed on December 4, 2018.
  12. ↑ At Night All Blood Is Black . In: thebookerprizes.com (accessed June 2, 2021).
  13. ↑ The 2021 International Booker Prize winner announcement . In: thebookerprizes.com, June 2, 2021 (accessed June 2, 2021).
  14. ↑ János Riesz, Aija Bjornson: The "Tirailleur Sénégalais" Who Did Not Want to Be a "Grand Enfant": Bakary Diallo's "Force Bonté" (1926) Reconsidered. In: Research in African Literatures , Vol. 27, No. 4 (1996), pp. 157-179.
  15. ↑ David Diop is Prix Ahmadou Kourouma 2019 winner . In: jamesmurua.com, April 22, 2019 (accessed June 2, 2021).
  16. ↑ Winnaars 2020 . In: europeseliteratuurprijs.nl (accessed June 2, 2021).
personal data
SURNAME Diop, David
SHORT DESCRIPTION Franco-Senegalese writer and literary scholar
DATE OF BIRTH February 24, 1966
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris , France