The Franco-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf, 74, author of “The Rock of Tanios” (Goncourt Prize in 1993) and “Lion the African”, among others, was elected perpetual secretary of the Academy of the French Language, reported the institution.
Maalouf, Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in 2010, thus begins to represent the traditional body that oversees the French language in official ceremonies.
In his new role, he is also in charge of establishing the agenda for the weekly sessions.
The Franco-Lebanese writer was already one of the current 35 “immortals” of the organization since he was admitted in 2011 and surpassed the writer Jean-Christophe Rufin in the vote.
Maalouf replaces the historian specializing in Russia Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, who died last August at the age of 94 and the first woman to direct the French Academy in its almost 400-year history.
The new perpetual secretary has also been a journalist for the Lebanese newspaper An Nahar and took refuge in France in 1975, fleeing the civil war in his country.
There he alternated work in the press with literary projects, which would begin to bear fruit in 1986, with the success he achieved with “León el Africano.” Since then, she published more than a dozen novels and essays.
