Friday morning at the Flore café in Paris, the jury unveiled the winners of the 14th Edition of the "FETKANN Literary Prize ! Maryse Conde" for the different categories : memory, research, youth and poetry.

The FETKANN Literary Prize rewards the works, collections, research works and essays that insist on the affirmation of human rights and favor the work of Memory of the countries of the South and of the whole of humanity on the slave trade and the slavery.

The Jury awarded the "FETKANN Literary Prize ! Maryse Conde 2017" to the famous writer, novelist, Haitian screenwriter, Gary Victor, in the category "Memory" for his novel "Les temps de la cruauté" (The Times of Cruelty) published by Philippe Rey.

Les temps de la cruauté :

"In a cemetery in Port-au-Prince, Valencia, carrying her baby in her arms, begging and sells her body to men among the tombs. When Carl Vausier, in full depression after a painful breakup, meets her, he feels a strange attraction for the very young woman, who is neither in love nor sexual. He believes he sees in her the possibility of his own redemption.

This path will however prove to be dangerous for him, because it will connect him to two difficult episodes of his past to which his memory tries to give other outlines.

With a perfect mastery of the workings of fiction, Gary Victor will weave these frames to bring up an unexpected finale. The sharp tensions of the Haitian society will spare no character, and Carl will be in turn instrument and victim of this cruelty which exerts a very strange fascination on the reader."

Learn more about Gary Victor :

Born in Port-au-Prince, in permanent exile in his third island as he likes to say, Gary Victor, journalist, playwright, writer, is the author of an important literary work that explores without concessions the most singular inner worlds. His keen eye on society and his conflicts makes him an author at once essential and unclassifiable. He has published about fifteen books including "À l’angle des rues parallèles" (Priwe of the Livre insulaire, 2003), "Je sais quand Dieu vient se promener dans mon jardin" (Prize RFO, 2004), "Banal Oubli" (2008), "Le Sang et la Mer" (Prize Casa de Las Americas, 2012), "L’escalier de mes désillusions" (2015) Prize Carbet des Lycéens.

HL/ HaitiLibre