Émilienne Malfatto

Émilienne Malfatto (born December 1989) is a French independent author, photojournalist and documentary photographer.

She is the winner of the 2021 Prix Goncourt for a first novel for her book Que sur toi se lamente le Tigre, and the Albert-Londres Prize for Les serpents viendra pour toi: une histoire colombienne .

 Biography 
Émilienne Malfatto was born in December 1989. She studied in Colombia and in France where she graduated from the journalism school of the Paris Institute of Political Studies  .

She began her career at the Colombian daily newspaper El Espectador in Bogota  , then worked for eight months at the Agence France-Presse (AFP) bureau in the Middle East  .

In 2013, she worked in the Middle East / North Africa office based in Cyprus and travelled to Iraq, during the Iraq war .

In 2015, she went to Bodrum in Turkey to meet candidates in exile and produced Dernière escale avant la mer , a report awarded the France Info-XXI prize  .

In January 2020, she went to Baghdad to cover the thawra , the Iraqi revolution, for the Washington Post . Her photos were exhibited at the Visa pour l'image festival in Perpignan  : Iraq: One Hundred Days of Thawra .

In September 2020, she published her first novel, Que sur toi se lamente le Tigre (Let the Tiger Lament Over You ). In a simple yet powerful style, she recounts the last day of a young Iraqi woman who is about to be killed by her brother because she is pregnant out of wedlock. The novel, published by Elyzad, based in Tunis ,  garnered attention by receiving a special mention from readers of the 2020 Hors Concours Prize. She was a finalist for the Régine-Deforges Prize. Émilienne Malfatto was awarded the Goncourt Prize for a first novel in 2021  .

In June 2021, she published an investigative essay, "The Snakes Will Come for You: A Colombian Story", in which she examines the disappearances of social leaders in Colombia by investigating the murder of Maritza, a mother of six who lived on a mountain farm  . The book, published by Les Arènes , was shortlisted for the Albert-Londres Prize, which she won in 2021. In 2022, she presented her book "The Colonel Doesn't Sleep" on the television program "La Grande Librairie" on France 5 .

 Works 

 Que sur toi se lamente le Tigre, éditions Elyzad, 2020 (, .
 Les serpents viendront pour toi : une histoire colombienne, Les Arènes, 2021 <small>(,  
 Le colonel ne dort pas, Éditions du sous-sol, 2022, 112 p., ().
 L'absence est une femme aux cheveux noirs, avec Rafaël Roa pour les photographies, Éditions du sous-sol, 2024, 192 p., ().

 References