Karim Miské

Karim Miské (born 1964, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire ) is a Mauritanian-French documentary film maker and writer whose debut novel Arab Jazz, a work of crime fiction, was awarded the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.

Biography Miské's father was a diplomat from Mauritania; his mother was French. His first documentary film was Économie de la débrouille à Nouakchott (1988), a 26-minute film on Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania.

Arab Jazz The novel's main character, Ahmed Taroudant, lives in the north-east of Paris in the 19th arrondissement, and is "a typical French Arab–religiously non-observant, confused about his identity, haunted by the past. An avid reader of crime fiction and a neurotic, he finds himself taking the blame for a murder: his upstairs neighbor Laura, who was in love with him though he never noticed it, is murdered, and her blood drips down his balcony. Two investigators (also readers of crime fiction) are already on the case, and Taroudant himself also tries to uncover what happened.The novel was translated into English by Sam Gordon.

The reviewer for The Guardian, Robin Yassin-Kassab, noted that the novel is full of references to other works of fiction, including James Ellroy's White Jazz. Yassin-Kassab criticized the "somewhat clumsy" dialogue and some "too obviously functional" characters, but praised the settings and the portrayal of French second-generation immigrants from Northern Africa, and Miské's scope: "Everyone’s been damaged by their heritage; everyone’s vulnerable to inner darkness and the explanatory narcotic of grand narrative".

Arab Jazz won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 2015, an award for police and crime fiction in French, and the Prix du Goéland Masqué.