Saber Mansouri, president of the 7th edition of the Goncourt Prize Choice of Tunisia, will be touring the regions (Monastir, Mahdia, Kairouan, Béjà and Bizerte) from 1 to 3 February 2023, ahead of the big ceremony scheduled for next March.
He will be at the French Institute of Tunisia on 31 January 2023 for a debate on his latest book "Un printemps sans le peuple", published by Passés / Composés (2022).
Summary: from the 19th century to the present, revolutions are celebrated as peculiar moments during which the genius of the people can be seen. As an observer of the revolution, Saber Mansouri gives the readers a glimpse of contemporary Tunisian and Arab politics. The colonial shock, the French protectorate, through the resistance movement, the independence, Bourguiba's years, Ben Ali's years, ... After living for decades under the authority of unelected people, the people of Tunisia face a country which is supposed to be democratic but which lacks citizens.
Tunisian historian and disciple of Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Saber Mansouri is the author of five essays and three novels. He founded the "Maktaba-Bibliothèque" collection published by Fayard, which aims at promoting unpublished texts of Arab-Muslim culture. He also teaches archaic and classical Greek history at the Catholic Institute of Paris. As a storyteller, he combines poetry and allegory to discuss the human condition. His novels include "Seven Daring Deaths and a Sitting Poet" (Elyzad, 2020), "A Woman without Writing" (Seuil, 2017), and "I was born eight times" (Seuil, 2013).