Peace Prize for Boualem Sansal and end of this year's Book Fair
This year's Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the high point and end of the Book Fair, went to Algerian author Boualem Sansal, and the speeches I heard yesterday fulfilled one of their key functions: they impressed and made me eager to read his books. The mayor of Frankfurt, Petra Roth, who always gives one of the introduction speeches and usually does so with much grace had a mixture of a good and a bad day; on the one hand, she pointed out (improvised, because if you attend the ceremony you get the speeches in written form there, and the remark isn't in hers) that for an example of how a struggle for independence and liberties can not guarantee those liberties will be kept but that the country in question can still persecute its authors and journalists and get rid of those liberties one by one we don't have to look to Algiers or the Middle East but to Europe as well, specifically Hungary where the movement for freedom in the Eastern Block started 20 years ago and which is right now in a horrible situation. This was a very apropos thing to say, especially since the general policy in Europe is to look away from what happens in Ungary (which is an EU member!). On the other hand, Petra Roth also mispronounced the name of the prize winner as "Salaam" instead of "Sansal" not once, but twice, which made everyone cringe, including herself, but it was as if a hex was on her, she kept doing it. (And the whole ceremony was televised, too.)
Everyone else's speeches went fine. Peter von Matt who did the laudatory speech for Boaulem Sansal was able to to give people like yours truly who hasn't read Sansal's work yet an impression of what it must be like, and what his life is like in Algiers, where he lives but is not allowed to be published, where he and his wife lost their jobs and can't go out at night for fear of their lives. (His French publisher, Rene Gallimard, was present at the ceremony which was later pointed out at the reception because usually only the publishers of the German translations bother to show up when their authors get this award.) The paradox of Algiers - a country rich in natural resources (oil, gas) and with a multicultural history (Sansal himself is a Berber, not an Arab) with enormous poverty among the general population and murderous struggles between Islamic fundamentalism (rejecting that multicultural tradition) and the what Sansal refers to as the "peaked caps", the military. He talked about the many mother figures in Sansal's work and the way they also stand for Algiers; the women he writes.
Indeed, what struck me immediately about Sansal's own speech was that among the first things he said was to point to his compatriot Assia Djebar, who received the Peace Prize in 2000 and whom he credits with being instrumental in fighting for women's rights in Algiers, and that her fight had results: "real resistance today in Algiers, resistence full of persistance and dignity, is put up in today's Algiers mainly by women". After talking more about the feminist struggle in Algiers he thanked his wife Naziha, not just, as most people do at these kind of ceremonies with a line or two about her support, but by pointing out how much she, too, had and is enduring. I have to say, I have attended a great many Peaze Price of the German Book Trade ceremonies by now and often was moved and impressed, but this is the first time a male author had this kind of feminist focus in his acceptance speech.
My French is very rusty, but as I said you get the speeches in written form as well, and with that support I was able to follow the one by Boualem Sansal, which was unabashedly emotional and at the same time very elegant, whether he was thanking, lamenting, accusing or expressing hope. Or the occasional dig, as to the Algerian ambassador who wasn't there. (This usually happens only with dictatorships - and the United States, as the American ambassador didn't show up when Susan Sontag received the award in 2003, either, but that was at the height of the Bush regime.) He came up with striking imagery, as comparing the long bloody liberation war against France from 1954 to 1962 with a matrjochka doll containing encapsuled future wars, more and more, each sowing the seeds for the next). While the majority of his speech was a passionate lament for the Algiers of today, the last part inevitably touched on the Arab spring, and on the hottest of all hot political irons, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now the papers had quoted Sansal ahead of time being sceptical about the former, but in the speech itself he wasn't and applauded that it happened, and then he continued: "The true miracle, however, would be not if the Israeli and Palestinians actually managed to make peace (...); the true miracle would be if those who play godfathers, tutors and advisors on both sides, and as prophets for their future would stop burdening them with their own ideological ballast. Holy wars, crusades, eternal voews, geo stratetic plans of salvation, this is all of the past; Israeli and Palestinians have to live in the here and now, not in a mythic past. The request for recognition of an independent and souvereign Palestinian state in the borders of 1967 which President Mahmud Abbas put to the UN was a blow into water, and we knew it would be ahead of time. And yet I think that this gesture will turn into a big gesture in future days, as decisive as the self immolation by the young Tunisian Bouazizi which set the Arab world on fire. For the first time in 60 years the Palestinians acted only from their own volition. They went to New York on their own accord, not because someone asked them to, and they did not seek permission or protection from either the Arab dictators, whom we are currently trying to get rid of one by one, or from the Arab league, which doesn't beat the war drum right now, or from some fundamentalist preacher. It was an extraordinary event. For the first time Palestinians acted like Palestinians in the service of Palestine, not as an instrument in the service of a non-existinc pan Arabic nation or of a very much existing djihadistic international. Only free people can make peace; Abbas came as a free man, and maybe he will pay for his life for this as Sadat did, for there are enough enemies of peace and liberty around. It is sad that a man like Obama, who in his person links two hemispheres on our planet, did not understand this and did not use the opportunity which he was waiting for since his famous Cairo speech."
Before anyone comments; yes, I know that if Obama had done anything but unconditionally support Israel on that occasion he could have kissed his chances for reelection goodbye. Presumably Sansal knows this as well, but this is what he said in his speech, which ended with a plea to Israel ("a free country which nobody doubts, a beautiful and a great democray, and more in need of peace than any other (...); the country has to break with its own extremists and all the lobbies who protected in their distant paradises encourage the country to a stiffness which locks it into unsolvable bloody equations").
After the ceremony, everyone wandered as ever to the Hotel Frankfurter Hof for the reception. En route, people talked about the speech. "Completely Utopian and unrealistic towards the end", said one. "Yes, but we say that, living in safety. Who but someone actually living in hell has the right to be Utopian instead of cynical?" returned another.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/720856.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Everyone else's speeches went fine. Peter von Matt who did the laudatory speech for Boaulem Sansal was able to to give people like yours truly who hasn't read Sansal's work yet an impression of what it must be like, and what his life is like in Algiers, where he lives but is not allowed to be published, where he and his wife lost their jobs and can't go out at night for fear of their lives. (His French publisher, Rene Gallimard, was present at the ceremony which was later pointed out at the reception because usually only the publishers of the German translations bother to show up when their authors get this award.) The paradox of Algiers - a country rich in natural resources (oil, gas) and with a multicultural history (Sansal himself is a Berber, not an Arab) with enormous poverty among the general population and murderous struggles between Islamic fundamentalism (rejecting that multicultural tradition) and the what Sansal refers to as the "peaked caps", the military. He talked about the many mother figures in Sansal's work and the way they also stand for Algiers; the women he writes.
Indeed, what struck me immediately about Sansal's own speech was that among the first things he said was to point to his compatriot Assia Djebar, who received the Peace Prize in 2000 and whom he credits with being instrumental in fighting for women's rights in Algiers, and that her fight had results: "real resistance today in Algiers, resistence full of persistance and dignity, is put up in today's Algiers mainly by women". After talking more about the feminist struggle in Algiers he thanked his wife Naziha, not just, as most people do at these kind of ceremonies with a line or two about her support, but by pointing out how much she, too, had and is enduring. I have to say, I have attended a great many Peaze Price of the German Book Trade ceremonies by now and often was moved and impressed, but this is the first time a male author had this kind of feminist focus in his acceptance speech.
My French is very rusty, but as I said you get the speeches in written form as well, and with that support I was able to follow the one by Boualem Sansal, which was unabashedly emotional and at the same time very elegant, whether he was thanking, lamenting, accusing or expressing hope. Or the occasional dig, as to the Algerian ambassador who wasn't there. (This usually happens only with dictatorships - and the United States, as the American ambassador didn't show up when Susan Sontag received the award in 2003, either, but that was at the height of the Bush regime.) He came up with striking imagery, as comparing the long bloody liberation war against France from 1954 to 1962 with a matrjochka doll containing encapsuled future wars, more and more, each sowing the seeds for the next). While the majority of his speech was a passionate lament for the Algiers of today, the last part inevitably touched on the Arab spring, and on the hottest of all hot political irons, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now the papers had quoted Sansal ahead of time being sceptical about the former, but in the speech itself he wasn't and applauded that it happened, and then he continued: "The true miracle, however, would be not if the Israeli and Palestinians actually managed to make peace (...); the true miracle would be if those who play godfathers, tutors and advisors on both sides, and as prophets for their future would stop burdening them with their own ideological ballast. Holy wars, crusades, eternal voews, geo stratetic plans of salvation, this is all of the past; Israeli and Palestinians have to live in the here and now, not in a mythic past. The request for recognition of an independent and souvereign Palestinian state in the borders of 1967 which President Mahmud Abbas put to the UN was a blow into water, and we knew it would be ahead of time. And yet I think that this gesture will turn into a big gesture in future days, as decisive as the self immolation by the young Tunisian Bouazizi which set the Arab world on fire. For the first time in 60 years the Palestinians acted only from their own volition. They went to New York on their own accord, not because someone asked them to, and they did not seek permission or protection from either the Arab dictators, whom we are currently trying to get rid of one by one, or from the Arab league, which doesn't beat the war drum right now, or from some fundamentalist preacher. It was an extraordinary event. For the first time Palestinians acted like Palestinians in the service of Palestine, not as an instrument in the service of a non-existinc pan Arabic nation or of a very much existing djihadistic international. Only free people can make peace; Abbas came as a free man, and maybe he will pay for his life for this as Sadat did, for there are enough enemies of peace and liberty around. It is sad that a man like Obama, who in his person links two hemispheres on our planet, did not understand this and did not use the opportunity which he was waiting for since his famous Cairo speech."
Before anyone comments; yes, I know that if Obama had done anything but unconditionally support Israel on that occasion he could have kissed his chances for reelection goodbye. Presumably Sansal knows this as well, but this is what he said in his speech, which ended with a plea to Israel ("a free country which nobody doubts, a beautiful and a great democray, and more in need of peace than any other (...); the country has to break with its own extremists and all the lobbies who protected in their distant paradises encourage the country to a stiffness which locks it into unsolvable bloody equations").
After the ceremony, everyone wandered as ever to the Hotel Frankfurter Hof for the reception. En route, people talked about the speech. "Completely Utopian and unrealistic towards the end", said one. "Yes, but we say that, living in safety. Who but someone actually living in hell has the right to be Utopian instead of cynical?" returned another.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/720856.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.