Maël Renouard, courtier and belles-lettres

Portrait of the writer Maël Renouard who publishes "The historiographer of the kingdom" by Grasset editions Credits: JF Paga

By: Jean-François Cadet Follow

2 min

Maël Renouard publishes "The historiographer of the kingdom" by Grasset editions.

A book on the lights and shadows of the ambitious who frequent the anterooms of power.

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If he had lived in 17th century France, he could have been Jean Racine, or a century later, Voltaire.

But if the narrator of Maël Renouard's new novel has been given the task of writing the history of a kingdom, it is the Cherifian kingdom, in other words Morocco.

And more precisely the Morocco of King Hassan II.

However, the account made by the narrator - a learned scholar trained at the prestigious Royal College in Rabat and in Paris at the University of the Sorbonne - has false airs of Saint-Simon, of tales from the Thousand and One Nights too.

By turns terrible and burlesque, this removed story is neither a hollow portrait of Hassan II, nor the story of the history of Morocco in the twentieth century, even if it is punctuated by adventures that have really happened.

It is above all a work on the grandeur and the pettiness of courtiers.

Maël Renouard's “Historiographer of the Kingdom” has been published by Editions Grasset.

Report:

went to see the play “Bananas (and Kings)” which is being performed at the Théâtre de la Reine Blanche, in Paris.

A show directed and written by Julie Timmerman about "Chiquita Brands International", the famous Banana company, symbol of American imperialism.

Find the complete rules for the VMDN competition by following the link: → rfi.my/jeuVMDN.

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