The French Lever Inter Prize for Literature 2022 was awarded Monday to 41-year-old Belgian writer Antoine Waters for his novel "Mahmoud ou la montee des eaux", which was inspired by the atmosphere of the Syrian war, Radio France announced. France Inter, whose listeners make up the jury.

This short novel is a prose monologue (similar to free verse) in which an elderly Syrian poet - spending his retirement on the banks of a lake - recalls painful moments in his life and in the history of his war-stricken country.

Mahmoud and Lake Lion

The protagonist of the novel is an old Syrian man who was a poet and teacher named Mahmoud, who is rowing alone on a boat in the middle of a vast area of ​​water, and beneath it is his childhood home, submerged in Lake Assad, which became a painful reality after the completion of the Tabqa dam in 1973.

Mahmoud closes his eyes in front of the roaring war, prepares himself to dive with a mask and a tube to dive under the water, and dives daily in the water to see his whole life again, his children at a time when they have not left yet to fight against Bashar al-Assad after the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, and his wife Sarah who is crazy with love of poetry, And imprisonment, and his first love, and his thirst for freedom.

Belgian novelist Antoine Waters, author of the novel (Lauren Waters)

The winning writer said on France Inter radio - yesterday, Monday - "I told myself that I would write the history of Syria in the voice of this old man, by letting him immerse himself in his memories and the waters of this lake, with very simple poetic words."

Although the author has not previously sought to place his stories in a precise spatio-temporal framework, this time he highlights Syria as a background.

Six years after the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011, Waters decided to face a harsh reality.

The work is characterized by an enormous metaphorical aura, and it questions the waters that flood life. The plot takes place in 2017. The narrator is a 70-year-old Syrian, who is close to the age of the Syrian Republic, according to the actualitte cultural platform.

In the events of the novel, the narrator navigates the lake and dives to find his memories, his children, his wife, and the peace of his country.

Above all, Waters, a young Belgian, comfortably puts himself in the shoes of an old Syrian man, and shows how literature can address experiences not lived by its writer.

The novel revolves around two worlds, one above ground and another under water, and the hero's journey back and forth between the two worlds invites us to contemplate the dream and reality, and meditates on the contradictions between the society of peace and the society of war, which links them with small life details such as "ears like butterfly wings, prominent but very flexible , very beautiful" and "apricot leaves that I would eat them."

young novelist

Antoine Waters, who comes from the Belgian region of Liege, has won a series of literary prizes, including the Marguerite Duras Prize and the Whipler Prize.

He also won the 2022 Goncourt Essay Prize for his "Museum of Contradictions", a collection of 12 letters by rebellious people.

Antoine Waters first worked as a teacher in higher education, before he drew attention in 2014 with his first novel, Nos meres, which tells about a child who fled war in the Middle East to exile in Europe.

The book "Mahmoud or the Flood" was chosen from among 10 competing works, by a jury of 24 France Inter radio listeners from all regions of France, headed by the novelist Delphine de Vigan.

Antoine Waters traveled a lot to Lebanon, and met many Syrian poets who settled in France, and in 2021 the writer was inspired by these meetings and published his novel written in the language of free poetry, tracing the story of the elderly poet who dared to say “no” to the Baath Party and chose a voice Writing and nonviolence.