Special Mention of the Jury of the Arab Literature Prize 2022 for the Sudanese novel "Les Noyées du Nil" translated by Marcella Rubino and Qaïs Saadi

CERMOM is pleased to announce that the Sudanese novel Les Noyées du Nil by Hammour Ziada, translated by Marcella Rubino and Qaïs Saadi and published by Actes Sud, has received the mention spéciale du jury du Prix de la Littérature arabe 2022.

Sudan, May 1969: the body of a teenage girl is discovered in the Nile, and the entire village along the river is in shock. Two powerful clans have long been vying for local power. The mayor's wife, Radia, sees herself as the guardian of tribal traditions and keeps her servants, who should be freed, enslaved. Such is the case of Fayit Niddo, mother of the beautiful Abir, who was forbidden to attend school and who, at thirteen, offers her charms to all the men who solicit her. As antagonisms flare up, a second corpse is fished out...
The author traces the genealogy of servitude and denounces its extensions with the precision of an anthropologist and the vigor of a seasoned storyteller. His characters live in a cruel, unchanging universe, with no hope for the dominated to escape except through death. The drowning of the young girls is that of an entire country.