Gauz' – författare

"One of those rare, transformative novels" KARIM MISKE"Funny and poignant" TIFFANY TSAO, author of The MajestiesInitially a little intrigued, all babies eventually return the security guard''s smile.The security guard adores babies. Perhaps because babies do not shoplift.Babies adore the security guard. Perhaps because he does not drag babies to the sales.

The 1960s - Ferdinand arrives in Paris from Côte d''Ivoire, ready to take on the world and become a big somebody.The 1990s - It is the Golden Age of immigration, and Ossiri and Kassoum navigate a Paris on the brink of momentous change.The 2010s - In a Sephora on the Champs-Élysées, the all-seeing eyes of a security guard observes the habits of those who come to worship at this church to consumerism.

Amidst the political bickering of the inhabitants of the Residence for Students from Côte d''Ivoire and the ever-changing landscape of French immigration policy, Ferdinand, Ossiri and Kassoum, two generations of Ivoirians, attempt to make their way as undocumented workers, taking shifts as security at a flour mill.

Sharply satirical, political and poignant, Standing Heavy is a searingly witty deconstruction of colonial legacies and capitalist consumption, an unprecedented and unforgettable account of everything that passes under a security guard''s gaze.

Translated from the French by Frank Wynne

"Inventive and very funny" Guardian"A compact, humane satire" Financial Times

BY THE AUTHOR OF STANDING HEAVY - SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2023Following the death of his parents, Dabilly, a young white man, seeks a life of colonial adventure in Cote d''Ivoire. It is 1880 and Dabilly joins a beleaguered French general trying to set up trading routes into a coast as yet untouched by colonisation. A century later, a Black boy born to communist parents in Amsterdam begins to research his family history. When he is sent to Cote d''Ivoire to visit his grandmother, he will discover traces of an ancestor he never knew existed.GauZ'' looks across continents and centuries to create a portrait of two very different men, tracing the paths and histories that connect them and plunging us deep into the history of colonisation in the Cote d''Ivoire.Translated from the French by Frank Wynne

Winner of the 2023 Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize • Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize • One of The Walrus'' Best Fall Books of 2023

A funny, fast-paced, and poignant take on Franco-African history, as told through the eyes of three African security guards in Paris. 

All over the city, they are watching: Black men paid to stand guard, invisible among the wealthy flâneurs and yet the only ones who truly see. From Les Grands Moulins to a Sephora on the Champs-Élysées, Ferdinand, Ossiri, and Kassoum find their way as undocumented workers amidst political infighting and the ever-changing landscape of immigration policy. Fast-paced and funny, poignant and sharply satirical, Standing Heavy is a searing deconstruction of colonial legacies and capitalist consumption and an unforgettable account of everything that passes under the security guards’ all-seeing eyes.

A Financial Times Best Book of 2024: Fiction in Translation

International Booker-nominated satirist GauZ’ returns with a panoramic journey into the colonization of the African interior.

Mourning the recent deaths of his parents, a young white man in nineteenth-century France joins a colonial expedition attempting to establish trading routes on the Ivory Coast and finds himself caught between factions who disagree on everything—except their shared loathing of the British.

A century later, a young Black boy born in Amsterdam gives his account, complete with youthful malapropisms, of his own voyage to the Ivory Coast, and his upbringing by his father, Comrade Papa, who teaches him to always fight "the yolk of capitalism."

In exuberant, ingenious prose, GauZ'' superimposes their intertwined stories, looking across centuries and continents to reveal the long arc of African colonization.