A01=Alain Mabanckou
Author_Alain Mabanckou
Category=DNC
Category=DNP
Category=WTL
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Product details
- ISBN 9781846689802
- Weight: 160g
- Dimensions: 128 x 192mm
- Publication Date: 14 May 2015
- Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize 2015
Alain Mabanckou left Congo in 1989, at the age of twenty-two, not to return until a quarter of a century later. When at last he comes home to Pointe-Noire, a bustling port town on Congo's south-eastern coast, he finds a country that in some ways has changed beyond recognition: the cinema where, as a child, Mabanckou gorged on glamorous American culture has become a Pentecostal temple, and his secondary school has been re-named in honour of a previously despised colonial ruler.
But many things remain unchanged, not least the swirling mythology of Congolese culture which still informs everyday life in Pointe-Noire. Mabanckou though, now a decorated French-Congolese writer and esteemed professor at UCLA, finds he can only look on as an outsider at the place where he grew up. As he delves into his childhood, into the life of his departed mother and into the strange mix of belonging and absence that informs his return to Congo, Mabanckou slowly builds a stirring exploration of the way home never leaves us, however long ago we left home.
Alain Mabanckou was born in 1966 in Congo. An award-winning novelist, poet and essayist, Mabanckou currently lives in LA, where he teaches literature at UCLA. His four novels African Psycho, Broken Glass, Black Bazaar and Tomorrow I Will Be Twenty - a fictionalised retelling of Mabanckou's childhood in Congo - are all published by Serpent's Tail. The Lights of Pointe-Noire was selected for an English PEN Award, and in 2015 Mabanckou was listed as a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize.
