Acadian author honoured for 50-year career

The 50-year publishing career of a New Brunswick author was honoured in Moncton as she launched her new book on Friday.

Antonine Maillet's new book, Le mystérieux voyage de Rien, was released on Friday with a launch at Moncton's Capitol Theatre.

"It's just like before giving birth to a new child," said the 79-year-old author.

'The Acadians have decided to remain alive' —Antonine Maillet, author

Maillet is being honoured at a three-day conference at Université de Moncton for her contributions to Canadian literature.

Scholars from Japan, Sweden, Slovakia, India, Brazil, the United States and Canada have converged at the university to pay tribute to the author who has been recognized as the first person to take the oral language of the Acadians and turn it into literature.

The Bouctouche native has written 40 books of which Pélagie-la-Charrette is the best known. The novel allowed her to become the first non-European to win France's top literary prize, the Prix Goncourt.

Represents minorities

Mini Nanda, who is attending the conference from the University of Rajasthan in India, said Maillet's work also reflects the experience of minorities in her country.

"What is common to both of them is their sense of deep empathy, love and concern for their own community — a community that is marginalized, a community whose language and culture is threatened by the central forces," Nanda said.

The books give a voice to the people who are suppressed or silenced in society, Nanda said.

"The writers are struggling to keep the rich oral tradition alive," she said.

Birgitta Brown, from Goteborgs University in Sweden, said she first discovered Maillet's work in 1979 and decided to do her doctoral thesis on the author. "From my point of view she's the finest Canadian writer," Brown said.

Maillet said she is honoured by the attention her work is getting and that she has no plans to stop writing.

"It always surprises me that I'm still there, still writing and still enjoying it more and more," she said.

'My own vision of the world'

Maillet's father told her when she graduated from university it would be the day she'd realize that she didn't know much about the world. He also told her not to compare herself to anyone else, she said.

"There was no way for me to compete. I had to find my own vision of the world," she said.

It's the role of literature to tell universal stories so that people can unite for a better world, she said.

Writing about Acadian culture is a way of keeping the society alive, she said, crediting artists for ensuring that Acadia has continued to live on.

"The Acadians have decided to remain alive," she said. "Acadia is beginning to be more and more the best of itself."