Name Rene Maran Role Poet | Books Batouala Awards Prix Goncourt | |
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Died May 9, 1960, Paris, France | ||
21 batouala de rene maran avec 8 dessins originaux d a iakovleff tajan art russe 29 nov 2013
René Maran (Fort-de-France, Martinique, 8 November 1887 – 9 May 1960) was a French Guyanese poet and novelist, and the first black writer to win the French Prix Goncourt (in 1921).
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Biography
Born on the boat carrying his parents to Fort-de-France where he lived till the age of seven. After that he went to Gabon, where his father Héménéglide Maran was in the colonial service. After attending boarding school in Bordeaux, France, he joined the French Colonial service in French Equatorial Africa. It was his experience there that was the basis for many of his novels, including Batouala: A True Black Novel, which won the Prix Goncourt.
Jean-Paul Sartre alluded to Maran in his preface to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, mocking the French establishment's complacent self-congratulation that they had "on one occasion given the Prix Goncourt to a Negro".
Selected works
