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Portrait of the writer David Diop on the occasion of the release of his novel "Brother of Soul" published by Editions du Seuil. Hermance Triay

He was in the running for all major literary awards in France. Today, he has finally won the prize for youth and the most prescriptor in French, the Goncourt high school students. The jury, meeting in Rennes, congratulated David Diop's "Brother of Soul" for "his terrible vision of the Great War, between Africa and Europe, wisdom and madness".

This is the story of two young men, Alfa Ndyaye and Mademba Dip, two Senegalese riflemen, during the Great War, the big butcher's shop between 1914 and 1918. Two of the 200,000 African fighters sent on behalf of France to the front of the First World War where about 30,000 Senegalese riflemen left their lives in the trenches.

Born in Paris, now 52, ​​David Diop spent his childhood in Senegal. Adept Apollinaire and currently a lecturer in literature of the eighteenth century at the University of Pau, he tried to transpose in Brother Soul the sound and rhythm of the Wolof language, spoken by the protagonists of the book, to French.

Giving an existence to the fate and pain of Senegalese tirailleurs

Narrated in a very direct and sometimes even naive manner, David Diop sought to give an existence to the destinies and pains of these young people long forgotten in history textbooks.

The idea of ​​this incisive novel and stripper came to him when he had read very moving letters of hairy having put down on paper their last moments before dying in the madness of the war. He then began looking for letters Senegalese tirailleurs before realizing that there were none. Coming from a continent where oral tradition takes precedence over writing, they have not left their mark on the books. Hence also the urgency felt by the writer to reconstruct this story. An omnipresent and palpable urgency in Soul Brother .

The happiness of the Goncourt prize for high school students

To receive the Goncourt prize from high school students is often the most beautiful moment in the life of a crowned writer. Especially since, in the last five years, a winner of the Goncourt high school students' prize sells, on average, 443,100 copies of his book. Not to mention the emotion of being elected by the younger generation, in this case a panel of 2,000 jurors, from 58 classes in France and abroad ... For the 30 years of the prize, the organizers have even made the move to also vote twelve inmates aged 20 to 50 years, the prison of Salon-de-Provence. Believing in the emancipatory force of literature is the very heart of this award unlike any other.

► Listen to our show with David Diop on Frère d'âme in the program Vous m'en direz news , RFI, 10/9/2018