On the occasion of the 2nd edition of the Goncourt Prize for Prisoners which crowned Mokhtar Amoudi for his novel “ The ideal conditions », return to this cultural and engaged project with a major immersion report at the Seine-Saint-Denis remand center within a reading workshop in the presence of a group of participants.
Immersion in the prison world and in the library of the Villepinte remand center where, every week, a group of a dozen inmates met to discuss their reading of the 16 novels competing for the Prize selection .
On-site meetings with the writer Dorothée Janin, the French teacher and the spokesperson for the participants.
“Thieves, runaways, vagabonds, of small virtues, the girls of Fresnes prison mutinied. On May 6, 1947, they broke down doors, broke windows, looted the commissary, stuffed themselves with chocolate and jam, climbed the prison wall and end up occupying the roof. For hours, they will hold their ground. The male prisoners, behind their bars, will cheer them. It will take one hundred and twenty police officers to dislodge them. The newspapers take hold of them for a time, describing the event as “collective hysteria”, and, after a new conviction, the rebels will return to the darkness of their dungeons. Lives of anonymous devils, voiceless sowers of trouble, posterity forgets them.” (Presentation of Stock editions)
“ In a few quarters, I had turned around. The French avoided me, warned by their parents of the risks of bad influence they ran by being around me. Worse, my school reports, a very dark shadow, described me as decadent and insolent. Becoming unfit to represent my class, I let the teachers finish me off during the last council of the year. My academic peak was compared to the Renaissance; a good memory that would never come back. » Placed in child welfare from a very young age, Skander is a boy who is curious about everything and passionate about reading. But his destiny changes when he lands in Courseine, in the Paris suburbs, with the formidable Madame Khadija. At college, he is dragged in despite himself by the young people of the Grand Quartier, who abolish his moral compass. The street becomes his kingdom, and takes him further away from his childhood dreams every day… With Ideal Conditions, Mokhtar Amoudi creates a coming-of-age novel with irresistible charm. (Presentation of Gallimard editions)