Yanick Lahens, Voice of Haiti Crowned by the French Academy

Port-au-Prince, November 5, 2025. — The French Academy awarded its Grand Prix du Roman 2025 this Thursday, October 30, to Haitian writer Yanick Lahens for her masterful work « Passagères de nuit », published by Sabine Wespieser editions. With eleven votes against ten in the third round of voting, the writer thus becomes the first Haitian woman to receive this literary distinction, one of the most prestigious in the Francophone world. A Historical Fresco Between Haiti and Louisiana In « Passagères de nuit », Yanick Lahens weaves a powerful feminine epic, set between Saint-Domingue, a French colony that became Haiti, and 19th-century New Orleans. From a few fragments of family history—a moustachioed general, two light-skinned sisters from Louisiana—she constructs a vast fresco on transmission, memory, and survival. The novel opens with the destiny of Elizabeth, a young quadroon forced to flee New Orleans after violently rejecting an influential man. Her exile brings her back to the land of her ancestors, Haiti, where her son will become the lover and hero of Regina, the narrator of the second part. Through these intertwined lives, Lahens conveys the tension between rootedness and uprootedness, the pain of exile, and the quest for freedom. The novel pays tribute to these Black women, enslaved or free, who managed to cross centuries by preserving, beneath imposed apparent docility, an indomitable inner self—their “sky-scarf,” a symbol of identity and resistance. A Literary and Symbolic Consecration The French Academy’s choice goes beyond aesthetic recognition: it marks a historic gesture towards Haitian literature and, more broadly, towards the contribution of Caribbean writers to Francophone heritage. Yanick Lahens, already a recipient of the Prix Femina 2014 for « Bain de lune », becomes the first author from Haiti to have her name inscribed in the annals of this venerable institution, joining a lineage of authors such as Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Patrick Rambaud, or Henri Troyat. This distinction confirms Lahens’ place as a major figure in Francophone literature, and a bearer of a voice rooted in the history, pain, and beauty of the great Haitian nation. Her writing, both poetic and visceral, is rooted in a fractured collective memory—that of slavery, independences, and struggles for dignity—while revealing a profound narrative modernity. In Port-au-Prince, the news sparked a wave of emotion and pride. The Haitian government, through Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, hailed “a luminous work that traces the intertwined destinies of Haitian and Louisiana women in the 19th century, an embodiment of resistance, transmission, and dignity”. Numerous cultural and political institutions and public figures—the National Library of Haiti, FOKAL, the ABC center of former Prime Minister Evans Paul, feminist organizations like Nègès Mawon, as well as political figures such as Jerry Tardieu or Serge Pierre-Louis—have expressed their admiration and gratitude. For journalist Frantz Duval, director of Le Nouvelliste, this award “reminds us that Haitian literature, despite the rubble of reality, continues to produce universal and inspiring voices”. Who is Yanick Lahens? Born in Port-au-Prince in 1953, Yanick Lahens is a novelist, essayist, and university professor recognized for her intellectual commitment. The first holder of the “Francophone Worlds” chair at the Collège de France, she has always advocated for a demanding and open vision of Haitian culture, as a space for dialogue between memory, identity, and the world. Her work, from « Dans la maison du père » to « Bain de lune », including « La couleur de l’aube », explores the country’s complexity, its social fractures, its spiritual impulses, and its collective imagination. The distinction awarded to « Passagères de nuit » acts as a symbolic mirror: in a national context often marked by crisis and despair, literature serves as a reminder that Haiti is not only a land of suffering but also a nation of thought, creation, and beauty. Yanick Lahens, through her lucid and generous voice, reaffirms what so many Haitian writers have always proclaimed: the dignity of a people is not measured by its ruins, but by the strength of its words and the light they carry.