A work marked by exile

Born on August 6, 1982 in Bujumbura, Burundi, Gaël Faye spent his childhood between Central Africa and France. The son of a French father and a Rwandan mother, he left his native country in 1995 to escape the civil war and the Tutsi genocide, a seminal experience that would profoundly influence his work. Settling in the Paris region, he turned to music and founded the hip-hop duo Milk Coffee and Sugar with Edgar Sekloka, blending rap, slam and Afro-jazz influences. In 2013, he released his first solo album, Pili Pili on a butter croissant, hailed for its poetic, committed writing. Three years later, he published his first novel, Petit Pays, inspired by his youth in Burundi, which met with immense public and critical success. Published in 2024, Jacaranda is his second novel.

A return to his roots

In Jacaranda, Gaël Faye weaves a poetic interior fresco, where intimacy mingles with history. Through the eyes of Milan, a young mixed-race boy raised in France, he explores the weight of silence, that of a Rwandan mother traumatized by the genocide she refuses to talk about. When images of 1994 appear on television, the child discovers a buried past and a country he must get to know. This is the start of a quest that will take him all the way to Rwanda, in the footsteps of four generations marked by colonization, war and reconstruction.

A novel of memory and reconstruction

With this text, Gaël Faye summons childhood memories and the ghosts of colonial history in a quest for identity. He explores filiation, transmission and the complexity of multiple roots in a style that is both musical and sensitive, blending realism and lyricism to evoke the fragile beauty of the world and resilience in the face of the wounds of exile. A novel of memory and reconstruction, Jacaranda portrays souls scarred by history but driven by the desire for reconciliation.

A work translated and awarded with the support of the French Institute

Prix Renaudot in 2024, Jacaranda has been translated into twenty-eight languages and won twenty-eight international Goncourt choices. Organized by the French cultural network abroad and the Académie Goncourt, the International Goncourt Choices reward authors from the Goncourt selections and offer a translation of the novels into the languages of the countries where they are awarded. For the translation, the book was supported in 11 languages through the French Institute's PAP (publication support program). This program enables a non-French-speaking public to access contemporary French creativity and thought. Since its inception, the PAP has contributed to the publication of over 25,000 titles in 80 different countries.