A01=Alain Mabanckou
african literature
Author_Alain Mabanckou
bildungsroman
black moses
brazzaville
Category=FBA
chinua achebe
congolese
dictatorship
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
frantz fanon
marien ngouabi
ngugi wa thiong'o
paris
pointe-noire
postcolonial africa
republic of congo
samuel beckett
Product details
- ISBN 9781788162333
- Weight: 220g
- Dimensions: 128 x 196mm
- Publication Date: 03 Jun 2021
- Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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In Pointe-Noire, in the small neighbourhood of Voungou, on the family plot where young Michel lives with Maman Pauline and Papa Roger, life goes on. But Michel's everyday cares - lost grocery money, the whims of his parents' moods, their neighbours' squabbling, his endless daydreaming - are soon swept away by the wind of history. In March 1977, just before the arrival of the short rainy season, Comrade President Marien Ngouabi is brutally murdered in Brazzaville, and not even naïve Michel can remain untouched.
Starting as a tender, wry portrait of an ordinary Congolese family, Alain Mabanckou quickly expands the scope of his story into a powerful examination of colonialism, decolonization and dead ends of the African continent. At a stroke Michel learns the realities of life - and how much must change for everything to stay the same.
Alain Mabanckou was born in 1966 in Congo and currently lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches literature at UCLA. His six previous novels Black Moses, African Psycho, Memoirs of a Porcupine, Broken Glass, Black Bazaar and Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty are all published by Serpent's Tail. Among his many honours are the Académie Française's Grand Prix de literature and the 2016 French Voices Award for The Lights of Pointe-Noire. Mabanckou is a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur, was a finalist for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize and has featured on Vanity Fair's list of France's fifty most influential people.
