The prize was awarded from Dakar to the Tunisian novelist for his book “Bel abîme”, which denounces through the portrait of a rebellious teenager “barbarism and the evils that plague” Tunisian society, announced the jury.
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The Tunisian Yamen Manaï received Tuesday June 14 the Orange price of the book in Africa for his novel beautiful abyss (Elizad editions) on a teenager from the region of Tunis in full revolt. Given in Dakar in the evening, the prize has been awarded since 2019 to a novel written in French by an African writer and published by a publisher on the continent, in this case Elyzad editions. Yamen Manaï, 42, an engineer by training, has lived in France since he was 18.
The short novel depicts the family violence suffered by a large part of Tunisian youth, through the story of a 15-year-old boy imprisoned for having killed his father. “Between fury, rage and passion, the narrator denounces the barbarism and evils that plague his society, from the family unit as well as the school, to political institutions”the jury said in a statement.
“For this fourth edition, 57 novels were proposed by 39 publishing houses based in 15 French-speaking African countries”, he added. The other five finalists came from Benin, Cameroon, Mali, Mauritania and Tunisia.
In its first edition, the award singled out Cameroonian Djaïli Amadou Amal, who later won the 2020 Goncourt High School Students Prize for The Impatients. It is endowed with 10,000 euros by the Orange Foundation, supported by the telecom operator of the same name.