In The Arab WellDidier Lentrein recounts the desolation of a post-apocalyptic society, dry and barren, where the survival of living beings depends on the parsimonious daily distribution of water. This story , located in 2048 in Saint-Philippe de La Réunion, won the prix Indianocéanie 2025. Dominique Bellier
Winner of the PrixIndianocéanie 2025, this novel can be read in one go, thanks to its simple, precise style and its engaging narrator, just like the characters he loves. But it plunges us into an unrecognizable Reunion Island, in 2048, just 23 years from now… The author revisits a thousand details of our daily lives and reconstructs the landscape in the light of the climate catastrophe. He describes living conditions so realistically that we feel the discomfort of his dirty, ragged protagonists.
Every morning, the old man and narrator, Cosinus, walks to the stadium and lines up to get his water ration : 1.5 liters. It’s the condition of survival. His friend Eddy, a kind-hearted homeless man who feeds dogs, hasn’t washed for a long time. As his spirit regularly leaves him, Cosinus takes him to the stadium every day to watch over him, so that he doesn’t forget on the way what he came here to do.
From climatic fresco, we move on to the thriller of the day when Eddy doesn’t show up… Latent until now, the most sordid violence becomes tangible; the crisis and absurdity of a purposeless existence exacerbate it. Yet Cosinus keeps the flame of hope alive through the books he trades in for a few proteins with a certain Beyoncé, and through the solidarity, humanism and thirst for justice of some.
