Gaël Faye is an author, songwriter, and hip-hop artist, born in 1982 in Burundi to a French father and Rwandan mother. In 1995, after the outbreak of the civil war and the Rwandan genocide, his family moved to France. He released his first solo album, Pili Pili sur un croissant au beurre, in 2013. His first novel, Small Country was a bestseller in France and has been awarded numerous literary prizes, among them the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, and was published in thirty countries worldwide. His adult novel, Jacaranda, won the the prestigious Prix Renaudot in 2024 and international Choix Goncourt awards in 28 countries, and is newly available in English from Hogarth.