Meeting with the author Maïa Alonso, passing through the Château de Besmaux.
For decades, Maïa Alonso has carried her emotions, her memories, through her writings. Her latest book has just been released by Cocagne editions in December 2022 “De sable et de vent”, where she describes the story of Nartaïr, a small grain of sand, which runs down her life on the dunes of the author’s native land. : Algeria. A very beautiful book, a work carried out with brio in the hollow of the dunes of the Sahara, a poetic, bewitching song, a lesson of hope and love. The journey over the centuries of Nartaïr, 15 years old, torn from his native land.
Excerpt from page 109: “When my soul gets tired of too much intoxication of solitude, I come back to the village and I like to come and sit, hidden by my turban and my burnous, near the domino players in the Moorish café. I absently follow the sizzling flight of glistening, delicate flies with cruel bites. The smoke escapes in yellow curls from the tiny cups of caoua that the caouadji, calling the blessing of the Most High on his customers, brings on his chiselled copper tray. Luxury in destitution. I am here at home…”;
This novel is beautifully illustrated by Dominique Feijo, a painter from Bearn who has been living in Seissan for many years.
Born in Algeria in Sidi-Bel-Abbes, granddaughter and daughter of Spanish colonists who arrived from Arboleas during the summer of 1870, then exiled for the last generation in 1962, Maïa has never been able, nor wanted, to forget her roots. , its dunes, its spices, its suns. She kept in her heart the pulsation, the vibrations, of this African country. After a hectic life between London and Paris and Fleurance, she moved to the town of Lombez in 1983 where she still lives, sharing her life between her literary writings, her place as a correspondent in the local press and her family.
Maïa gives us to discover a rich bibliography of seven novels over the previous ten years: The odyssey of Grain de Bled in the land of Ifriqiya in 2013, ed.
The Harmattan. With Atlantis editions in Germany, she published: The Colonial Sun in 2014, The Children of the Unicorn in 2015, The Sandy Butterfly in 2016, The Murdered Dream in 2017.
Just a reflection on the glass in 2021, at ed. Lazaze and Capucine. A novel that suggests a new way of writing heading towards spirituality. We will find her in a new new novel that breaks with what she has written so far: a futuristic and spiritual adventure on an island in Patagonia.
In salute to her talent as an author, Maïa Alonso receives in 2022 the silver medal from the Academic Society of Arts, Sciences and Letters. She will sign her latest book “De sable et de vent”, tomorrow Tuesday 10 January at 6:30 p.m. at L’atelier 122 in Gimont, at 6:30 p.m.
It will also be soon (dates not communicated) at the media library of Endoufielle and at the Librairie Buissonnière de Samatan.
You can contact her on 06 21 91 83 95
For the Journal du Gers Isabelle Gaignier