Mémoire et identité renaissante dansorigines d’Amin Maalouf

Abstract

With his last novelOrigins that received the Price Mediterranean 2004, the Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf realized a cut fresco in the history that presents itself as a love song and expression of gratitude with regard to his family. This novel, which is distinguished from his previous works by its autobiographical aspect, is endowed with a well solid and judicious argumentation and limpid prose that makes the fluid and specified writing erect this Lebanese writer in the row of the most gifted and promising figures in the field of French-speaking literature of the East Mediterranean. Born in Lebanon in 1949, living now in France, and having received the price of Goncourt in 1993, the writer has always had difficulties talking about his roots. But in this novel, he felt the vital need to renew his origins and call upon his historical commemoration to be found with himself, to reconcile himself with his identity without considering it rather as promoting than “deadly”. A plural and enriching identity brings him a new existential dimension that allows him to expose proudly his genealogical alignment and to assert his membership to a well specific Lebanese community. By the recourse to French language in his fictional production, he contributes to the development of a dialogue of the cultures between the two shores of the Mediterranean.