The Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation and the Arab World Institute in Paris announced yesterday, Tuesday, the awarding of the Arab Literature Prize to the Iraqi-French writer Feurat Alani for his novel published in march 2023 in French, ‘I Remember Fallujah.’
Pierre Lescure, the General Commissioner and Managing Director of Lagardère and Director of the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation, stated in a statement to the Arab World Institute, ‘The primary purpose of the prize is to bring the voices of Arab world writers to France to continue building bridges between our different cultures, making them more open to each other.’
Feurat Alani, a journalist and documentary filmmaker born to Iraqi parents in France in 1980, founded his own production company in 2012. He won the Albert Londres Prize in 2019 for a previous book, a graphic novel called “Flavors of Iraq”, which tells the story of his experience in Iraq as a kid, teenager and then journalist. With his last novel, “I remember Fallujah”, he writes about his father who fled Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in the 1970s and lived in France as a political refugee. As he ages, he suffers from memory loss, and his memories are suspended somewhere between Iraq and France, remembering only his hometown of Fallujah. Feurat recounts what he knows in the hope of uncovering some secrets.
The award, launched 10 years ago by the Arab World Institute and the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation, is one of the rare French awards that honors Arab creatives who write in French with the aim of promoting Arab literature in France.”
