Dublin Literary Award 2022. The Art of Losing Alice Zeniter translated by Frank Wynne.

Performance by Emmanuel Okoje. Dublin Literary Award is sponsored by @DublinCityCouncil.

Support from:
@DublinCityLiterature
@Dublin City Libraries

Naïma has always known that her family came from Algeria – but up until now, that meant very little to her. Born and raised in France, her knowledge of that foreign country is limited to what she’s learned from her grandparents’ tiny flat in a crumbling French sink estate: the food cooked for her, the few precious things they brought with them when they fled.

On the past, her family is silent. Why was her grandfather Ali forced to leave? Was he a harki – an Algerian who worked for and supported the French during the Algerian War of Independence? Once a wealthy landowner, how did he become an immigrant scratching a living in France?

Naïma’s father, Hamid, says he remembers nothing. A child when the family left, in France he re-made himself: education was his ticket out of the family home, the key to acceptance into French society.

But now, for the first time since they left, one of Ali’s family is going back. Naïma will see Algeria for herself, will ask the questions about her family’s history that, till now, have had no answers.

About the Author/Translator
Alice Zeniter was born in 1986. She is the author of four novels; Sombre dimanche (Albin Michel, 2013) won the Prix du Livre Inter, the Prix des lecteurs de l’Express and the Prix de la Closerie des Lilas; Juste avant l’oubli (Flammarion, 2015) won the Prix Renaudot des lycéens. She is a playwright and theatre director.

Frank Wynne is an Irish translator who has translated and published comics and graphic novels and began translating literature in the late 1990s. He has translated works by, among others, Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder and Ahmadou Kourouma , and has won a number of awards, including the DUBLIN Literary Award 2002, Scott Moncrieff Prize and the Premio Valle Inclán.

Agency: Bellow
Client: DCC and Dublin Literary Awards
Director and Cinematography: Tristan Hutchinson
Actors: Emmanuel Okoye
Focus Puller: Samuel Mulcahy
Sound Recordist: Caimin Agnew
Assistant Camera: Ben Meakin
Sound Mix: Colin McKenna at Ramble Recordings
Locations: 14 Henrietta Street & Fumbally Stables