[Many thanks to Ifeona Fulani for bringing this item to our attention.] Our congratulations to Kei Miller, who recently won the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde 2017 for the French edition of his novel Augustown [also see previous post French Edition of Kei Miller’s “Augustown”]. The Institut du Tout-Monde writes:
One of the major writers of the young Jamaican literary generation today is awarded the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde. His French publisher (Editions Zulma, Littératures du monde entier) presents him thus: “A novelist and poet, Kei Miller was born in 1978 in Kingston, Jamaica, where he grew up. He lives in the United Kingdom. Since publishing L’authentique Pearline Portious, he has been pursuing a writing that is as vivid as it is captivating about our way of thinking and telling the world. His third novel, By the rivers of Babylon (released by Zulma on September 7, 2017), was awarded the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in 2017.” Especially noted for L’authentique Pearline Portious (French translation by Nathalie Carré, published by Zulma in 2016), Kei Miller addresses in his work, issues related to the vision of Caribbean identity, as perceived in and by the world.
Especially in his first novel (translated into French in 2016), we see one of the crucial themes chosen by Caribbean literature to express the transformations of this identity, as well as the difficulty of apprehending it solely by a look based on exteriority: the theme of madness (which was so carefully studied by Édouard Glissant through his character Marie Celat, and by other writers, such as the playwright Julius Amédé Laou). By the rivers of Babylon reveals an endogenous view and a striking style, all the specificity of Jamaica’s history and identity, focusing in particular on the will to restore what Bedwardism and Rastafarianism really were. A restitution that is a taking back of history by literature, in the great tradition that grounds Caribbean literature.
[Excerpts translated by Ivette Romero.] For full article, see http://tout-monde.com/prixcarbet2017laureat.html
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