Amin Maalouf was elected permanent secretary of the French Academy on Thursday September 28. He thus succeeds Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, who died on August 5, in this position which makes him the 24e character of the State. Appreciated by almost everyone in the Quai Conti institution, dubbed by the “Tsarina” Carrère d’Encausse, the writer was the only one in the running until his ” friend “ Jean-Christophe Rufin declares his candidacy on Monday September 25. However, he remained the big favorite in the vote, which he won by 24 votes to 8.
His story, like his work, makes Amin Maalouf a man who crosses borders, haunted by the incomprehension that can separate the West from the East. Determined to “undermine” And “demolish” what he called, in his reception speech at the French Academy in 2011, the “wall of hatred – between Europeans and Africans, between the West and Islam, between Jews and Arabs”, the first Lebanese to sit under the Dome established himself from the publication of his first essay, The Crusades seen by the Arabs (JC Lattès, 1983), as a writer capable of building bridges between cultures and belongings. He hates nothing more than “twitching identity » and communitarianism.
And for good reason. Born in Lebanon in 1949, to a Catholic mother from the Melkite Greek minority and a Protestant father, grandson of a Turk married to a Maronite Egyptian, he was raised in Arabic, spoke English at home and carried out his education at the French Jesuit school. At 22, he became a journalist, like his father, and covered the last days of Saigon, the fall of the Ethiopian monarchy and the Iranian revolution. Passionate “the march of the world”, he nevertheless prefers the position of observer to that of a man of action. Unwilling to live in a country at war or actively engage in defending a camp, he moved to France in 1976 after the civil war broke out. ” below [s]windows » in Beirut in 1975.
Historical novels extended by essays
Although he initially continued his activities as a journalist in Paris and became editor-in-chief of Young Africa, the success of his first work encouraged him to devote himself to writing. Well done to him since his novel, Leo the African (JC Lattès, 1986), became a bestseller after its passage to Apostrophes. Highly documented, his historical novels are written in an elegant and fluid style. His talents as a storyteller make the story of an Orient that is both legendary and very current accessible to a wide audience.
You have 50.2% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.