Moroccan Poet Abdellatif Laâbi Wins Lyon’s Prestigious Roger-Kowalski Prize for ’Presque Riens’

The Moroccan author "promotes artistic and intellectual commitment as a means of fighting injustice and implements an aesthetic of dissent" through his writing, the jury said in a statement announcing the award of this year’s prize to Abdellatif Laâbi. "His life experience is the primary source of a plural work (poetry, novel, theater, essay) situated at the confluence of cultures," the jurors added.

"Presque Riens" is a kind of testament filled with wisdom and optimism. "Behind the amused irony, these ’almost nothings’ concentrate the essential moments of a life. They make this publication both a balance sheet book and a book of wisdom. An amazing communicative energy emerges from it," the publisher says. "This work retraces the battlefield of life, crosses the extinct animal species, the great anger of the oppressed and the poetry that always makes the heart