Literatur übersetzen - BRIGITTE GROSSE ÜBER »JACARANDA« VON GAËL FAYE

Milan is a normal boy from Versailles. Until the day Claude turns up, a relative of his mother's from Rwanda. When Claude disappears again, Milan can't shake the memory of his little "brother". Why did his mother never mention him, why does Milan only know Rwanda from the evening news? It is only as a young man that he travels to Kigali and becomes friends again with Claude and the obscure Sartre. Journey after journey, Milan begins to uncover the family secret and realizes that Rwanda is still recovering from the genocide against the Tutsi. With his typical gentleness, Gaël Faye follows the lives of his characters in "Jacaranda", telling of dialog and forgiveness. A book from which one emerges changed.

Gaël Faye, born in Burundi in 1982, grew up as the child of a Rwandan mother and a French father before he was forced to flee to France in 1994 as a result of the civil war in Burundi. After completing his studies in economics, he worked as an investment banker in London for two years before returning to France to work as an author, musician and singer. His debut "Little Country" was already an immense international success; both novels were nominated for the Prix Goncourt and received numerous awards.

Brigitte Große, born in 1957, was a proofreader and editor and has long worked as a literary translator from French and English. She has received numerous awards for her translations of works by Frédéric Beigbeder, Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt and Amélie Nothomb, among others. She has been the German voice of Gaël Faye since 2017. In Bonn, she will talk about her collaboration with Faye and his texts as well as the art of literary translation in general.

In cooperation with the Institut Français Bonn.