From Haiti to Canada, a Quebec debut novel reaches for France's top literary prizes

MONTREAL — When Thélyson Orélien learned that his first novel had made it on a shortlist for France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt, he thought about two places: Haiti, where he was born, and Quebec, where he says his life as a writer truly began. “It’s difficult to take in, to be honest,” Orélien told The Canadian Press from Paris, where he was on a press tour following the announcement. “Humanly, it’s dizzying.” His fiction novel, “C’était ça ou mourir,” which translates to “It was either that or dying,” is among 16 books on the initial shortlist for the Goncourt, one of the most important prizes in French-language literature.

The novel follows a Haitian man named Jonas Dorléon, who is forced to leave his country and undertake a perilous journey through the Americas. For a Quebec writer — especially a debut novelist — the recognition is highly unusual, said Michel Lacroix, a professor of literary studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal. The book has also recently been shortlisted for two other prestigious French literature prizes: the Femina and the Renaudot.

“It’s extremely rare, almost unheard of in the history of Quebec literature,” Lacroix said. Orélien, who left Haiti for Quebec after the devastating 2010 earthquake, said the recognition he is getting is also providing an opportunity to put a human face on migrants at a time when they find themselves at the centre of intense political debates. Born in Gonaïves in 1988, Orélien was already writing poetry before arriving in Quebec.

He said his experience of leaving Haiti and the stories of other migrants helped shape the novel, although he noted that Jonas Dorléon’s story was a fictional account. The book’s main character is a history and geography teacher and a poet living in Port-au-Prince. He does not begin the novel as a migrant.

But he becomes one when he is forced to flee his home due to escalating civil unrest and violence. “Before being a migrant, he is a person,” Orélien said of his protagonist. “You become a migrant in the eyes of others,” he said.

You become a migrant at the borders you cross.” The protagonist’s journey takes him from the Dominican Republic and South and Central America, including the dangerous Darién Gap, before he eventually reaches the United States to make his way to Quebec. Along the way, the professor takes on identities imposed by ci…