Much of Europe's artistic energy comes from its immigrants and ethnic minorities. Zadie Smith and Salman Rushdie are just a few who have collected the U.K.'s Man Booker Prize. In France this year, the Prix Goncourt went to Marie Ndiaye, a French-Senegalese author. The Prix Medicis, arguably France's second most important literary honor, went to Dany Laferriere, a Haitian writer who lives in Montreal.
So there has been some embarrassment in political and literary circles when it turned out that Ms. Ndiaye has been living in self-imposed exile in Berlin. She says she moved there after the election of President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007, whom she accuses of bringing an "atmosphere of surveillance and vulgarity." She cited harsh measures against illegal immigration. "I find this France monstrous," she told a magazine.
Ms. Ndiaye has a background similar to President Obama; she had an African father, but was born and raised in France. She is the first black woman to win the award and the first female winner in a decade. She says she's never been personally discriminated because she's never applied for a job. Employment discrimination is blatant in France and repeated investigations by the news media seem to have little effect. However, she says her brother, a historian, is frequently hassled by the police. She says she moved to Berlin because it was a "freer city."
A member of President Sarkozy's UMP party called on her to recant, arguing that now that she was a literary ambassador, she had a duty to refrain from criticizing France. In a letter to French culture minister Frederick Mitterand, prominent parliamentarian Éric Raoult declared: "It seems to me that the right to express one's self cannot be turned into the right to insult or settle one's own personal scores.... A well-known person who defends France's literary accomplishments must show some degree of respect toward our institutions."
Ms. Ndiaye has not backed off. Her prize-winning novel, "Three Powerful Women," explores immigration and ends with an African woman who dies trying to reach Europe. It has set off the kind of literary tempest the French are fond of. And it comes at a time when Sarkozy's UMP party has launched a four-month discussion of French identity. They might learn something by listening to Ms. Ndiaye.
