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Posted November 4, 2009

Haitian-Born Laferrière, the First Canadian Writer

to Win France's Prestigious Médicis Literary Prize

Haitian-born Montreal writer Dany Laferrière displays his book L'Énigme du retour after he received the Médicis literary award in Paris November 4, 2009. (Photograph by Philippe Wojazer, Reuters)

MONTREAL - Montreal-based Dany Laferrière is the winner of the Prix Médicis 2009 for his novel L'Énigme du retour (Éditions Boréal).

The book is a mix of haikus and narrative and describes the Haitian-Canadian author's return to Haiti following the death of his father.

Laferrière receives 30,000 euros, almost $47,000. He is the first Canadian to win the Médicis, France's literary prize celebrating original writing, since 1966, when Marie-Claire Blais won for Une saison dans la vie d' Emmanuel.

(The book) reflects on exile,� Laferrière said in a video interview recorded by publisher Grasset & Fasquelle in France in September. It is full of contradictions and contrasts. When I returned to Haiti I wanted to distance myself from its history. I took my notebook and I wrote down what was happening now.�

L'Énigme du retour currently tops The Gazette's best-seller list in the French-language category.

The Prix Médicis is a French literary award given to a writer with exceptional talent who has not yet attained worldwide fame. A prize is awarded for both national and international fiction and one for non-fiction.

Laferrière immigrated to Canada from Haiti in 1978 and now divides his time between Montreal, New York and Miami. He has written 16 novels, including Comment faire l' amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer (1987) and the children's book Je suis fou de Vava, which won a Governor General's Literary Award in 2006.

Two of his novels, Comment faire l' amour and Vers le sud (2006) have been made into feature films.

His novel I Am a Japanese Writer, (the translation of Je suis un ècrivain japonais, 2008) about a novelist suffering from writer's block who finds out he is famous in Japan for a book he never wrote, will be published in English next fall. Laferrière is also the recipient of the 2010 Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prix. It awards him $10,000.

Other Prix Médicis winners were American author Dave Eggers for What Is the What, the odyssey of a young Sudanese refugee, and Alain Ferry for Memoire d'un fou d' Emma, an ode to fictional character Emma Bovary and author Gustave Flaubert.

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette. Published Wednesday, November 4, 2009.

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