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Goncourt Academy Announces Shortlist of Winners in Beirut

The Goncourt Prize jury in March 2020 at the Drouant restaurant. Credit: Lionel BONAVENTURE / AFP
The Goncourt Prize jury in March 2020 at the Drouant restaurant. Credit: Lionel BONAVENTURE / AFP
    Beirut - Sawsan el-Abtah
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Goncourt Academy Announces Shortlist of Winners in Beirut

The Goncourt Prize jury in March 2020 at the Drouant restaurant. Credit: Lionel BONAVENTURE / AFP
The Goncourt Prize jury in March 2020 at the Drouant restaurant. Credit: Lionel BONAVENTURE / AFP

At Beirut’s Pine Residence, the jury of the Goncourt literary prize has exceptionally announced the names of the four finalists in France's most prestigious literary prize. The name of the winner will be announced, as every year, at the Drouant restaurant in Paris on November 3.

Didier Decoin, president of the Académie Goncourt, announced the names of the 2022 finalists: Giuliano da Empoli for her book ‘Le Mage du Kremlin’ (Gallimard), Brigitte Giraud for ‘Vivre Vite’ (Flammarion), Cloé Korman for ‘Les Presque Sœurs’ (Seuil) and Makenzy Orcel for ‘Une Somme Humaine’ (Rivages). The ceremony was also attended by president Philippe Claudel, Camille Laurens, and Paule Constant.

This announcement in the Lebanese capital comes on the sidelines of the 1st edition of the “Beirut Books”- International and Francophone Book Festival.

Sponsored by France’s embassy in Beirut, the festival runs over 10 days in several Lebanese regions. This is the second time the Goncourt Academy announces its finalists list from Beirut, the first was in 2012.

Beirut Books, which hosts over 100 Francophone writers from around the world, witnessed some debate following a tweet by the Lebanese culture minister Mohammad Mortada, in which he said that Beirut will never be a route for normalization through writers partaking in a cultural event, without naming the writers or the nature of their activities.

The tweet was deleted shortly, but the debate continued between some who considered that the minister is distorting Lebanon’s reputation as the country of liberties, and others who assured that there is no room for tolerance with Israel or those who support it. However, some francophone writers didn’t wait for the end of the Lebanese debate and announced they are not willing to attend the festival because they don’t feel comfortable.

Among those are Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Pascal Bruckner, Pierre Assouline, and Tahar Ben Jelloun. When the jury members were asked about their colleagues’ decision not to attend, Decoin replied: “They said why they’re not coming and voiced their opinion about that. As for Pascal, he has a personal situation.”

Asked whether it’s because the freedom of expression, Philippe Claudel said: “The entire world has problems with the freedom of expression. Even the most democratic countries have some topics that cannot be discussed, taboos are everywhere. Even in the US, there are some terms that people cannot say. It’s a universal complication. Anyone can write whatever they want on social media, and do whatever they want, in one minute.”

“I won’t feel safe in this country where killing is so easy,” Tahar Ben Jelloun said after he announced he’s not going to attend the festival. It’s worth noting that Ben Jelloun was invited to many events in Lebanon in the past years but didn’t attend any.

The academy members who came to Beirut expressed their gratitude and joy for the hospitality and warmth they received, saying they are ready to return any time, and that they will visit different regions to meet the Lebanese people. They also said their work at the academy has went beyond reading books and selecting winners, to travelling, meeting with readers, and bringing books closer to people’s tastes, which is a very important task.

About the four winners, the jurors said they are thrilled with the results because the academy was always falsely accused of excluding women, non-French candidates, or small publishing houses.

Among this year’s winners are two women, and two men including and Italian and a Swiss. Last year, Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, and a small Senegalese publishing house won the prize.

According to the jury members, their selection was mainly based on the joy of reading and the quality, noting that they spent a lovely summer exchanging and discussing the novels. The winners were selected based on the majority of voices following democratic deliberations in a videocall that included all the jury members.

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Rats Feast on New York’s City’s Bagged Garbage. Can Putting It in Bins End the Smorgasbord?

A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)
A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)
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Rats Feast on New York’s City’s Bagged Garbage. Can Putting It in Bins End the Smorgasbord?

A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)
A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)

For half a century, New York City residents have taken out their trash by flinging plastic bags stuffed with stinking garbage straight onto the sidewalk.

When the bags inevitably leak or break open, they spill litter into the street, providing smorgasbords for rats. In the winter, the trash mounds get buried in snow and remain frozen in place for days, sometimes weeks, reinforcing the city’s reputation as filthy.

Now, New Yorkers are slowly adjusting to a radically new routine, at least for America's biggest city: Putting their trash in bins. With lids.

Earlier this month, covered bins became a requirement for all residential buildings with fewer than 10 living units. That’s the majority of residential properties. All city businesses had to start using bins earlier this year.

“I know this must sound absurd to anyone listening to this who lives pretty much in any other city in the world,” said Jessica Tisch, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, who oversaw the new measures before becoming the city's new police commissioner this week. “But it is revolutionary by New York City’s standards because, for 50 years, we have placed all our trash directly on the curbs.”

Residents who've already experienced trash containerization elsewhere agree it's long overdue for New York City to catch up.

“You see plastic bags open with the food just rotting and stinking and then it leaking out over the sidewalk and into the road,” said John Midgley, who owns a brownstone in Brooklyn and has lived in London, Paris and Amsterdam. “Just the stink of it builds up, you know, week after week after week.”

New York City's homes, businesses and institutions put about 44 million pounds (20 million kilograms) of waste out on the curb every day, about 24 million pounds (11 million kilograms) of which is collected by the city's sanitation department. Much of the rest is handled by private garbage carters.

In the early 20th century, New York City required trash to be placed in metal cans. But in the era before widespread plastic bag use, refuse was thrown directly into the bins, making them filthy and grimy.

Then in 1968, the city’s sanitation workers went on strike. For more than a week, trash cans overflowed. Garbage mounds piled high on sidewalks and spilled into the streets like some dystopian nightmare.

Plastic bag makers donated thousands of bags to help clean up the mess, and New Yorkers never looked back, said Steven Cohen, a Columbia University dean specializing in public affairs.

“It had to do with convenience,” he said. “After the strike, the sanitation workers preferred the modern advance of lighter and seemingly cleaner sealed plastic bags.”

Plastic kept more odors in, compared to the old metal bins. A worker could grab the neck of a bag and easily fling it into a truck.

But Democratic Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has deemed trash bag mounds Public Enemy No. 1 in his well-documented war against the city's notorious rats.

Rats have little problem getting into a plastic bag. Durable bins with closing, locking lids should, in theory, do a better job of keeping them out.

The bin requirement, which took effect Nov. 12, comes with its own challenges. Among them: Finding a place for large, wheeled bins in neighborhoods where most buildings don't have yards, alleys or garages. Landlords and homeowners also have to collect the empty bins and bring them back from the curb in the morning — something you didn't have to do with plastic bags.

Caitlin Leffel, who lives in Manhattan, said residents of her building had to hire someone “at surprisingly high cost” to bring out the bins the night before and bring them back in three times a week.

“I know there are problems with the way this city has collected trash for years,” she said. “But the way this program has been rolled out, it has not taken into account many of the nuances of living in New York City.”

Building superintendents are also grumbling about the added work of bringing bins back from the curb.

“It’s completely rearranged our lives,” says Dominick Romeo, founder of NYC Building Supers, a group of building managers that recently rallied in front of City Hall against the new requirements. “Folks are running around like crazy.”

Eventually, the largest residential buildings — those with more than 31 units — will have their own designated container on the street. New trash trucks built with automated, side-loading arms — another innovation that is already common in many other countries — will then clear them out.

The upgrades should make pickups easier and cleaner, even if it might take longer for trash collectors to make the rounds, says Harry Nespoli, president of the union representing some 7,000 city sanitation workers.

For now, he says, workers are still tossing trash into their trucks manually, which has its own downsides.

“Some places, they’re not even using bags. They're just putting their trash into the bins,” Nespoli said. “It's going to take time to get everyone to do it the right way, but at the end of the day, it's our job to pick it up.”

Tisch believes New Yorkers will eventually come around to the new reality.

City officials, for now, are issuing written warnings for non-compliance. Not everyone knows about the new rules yet. But come Jan. 2, fines ranging from $50 to $200 will kick in.

“No one wants to live on a dirty block,” Tisch said. “No one wants to walk past a heaping mound of trash and trash juice when they are leaving to go to work or they are walking their kids home from school.”