Rachid Benzine, French-Moroccan novelist, dramatist and Islamic scholar, has been awarded the Grand Prix du Roman Métis 2024 for the book "Le silence des pères" published in 2023 by Seuil.The award will be handed out on December 3, 2024.
“Le silence des pères” tells the story of a son who returns after his father's death and recounts the story of a quiet man who worked for the Charbonnages de France in the early 1960s.
The narrator, Amine, is a renowned piano player who hasn't seen his father since the start of his international music career. When Amine goes to the family flat in Trappes, he accidentally finds a large envelope containing audio "cassettes" hidden in the bathroom. When his father wanted to communicate with his grandfather in Morocco, he used to record his messages and post them. The audio letters all begin with "My dear father"...
The Grand Prix du Roman Métis is an international literary prize awarded by the town of Saint-Denis de la Réunion. It was founded in 2010 to honour a French-language novel published less than a year ago that conveys the values of interbreeding, diversity, cultural exchange, humanism and universality.
