An African Novelist Poised for Recognition in the U.S.
This content was originally published by JOHN WILLIAMS on 25 May 2017 | 8:43 pm.
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Alain Mabanckou, author of “Black Moses.”
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Monica Almeida for The New York Times
In 2012, the novelist and memoirist Alain Mabanckou won the Académie Française’s grand prix for lifetime achievement. Though he is just 51 now, Mr. Mabanckou’s life’s work — most of it set in Pointe-Noire, his hometown in the Congo Republic — has yet to become as well known in the United States.
His latest novel, “Black Moses” (out June 6), might start to change that. The book, translated by Helen Stevenson, was longlisted for this year’s Man Booker International Prize. It’s the dark but entertaining story of a boy in the Congo Republic who escapes a harrowing orphanage and ends up coming of age among a group of thieves in Pointe-Noire in the 1970s and ’80s.
“Black Moses” is less autobiographical than some of Mr. Mabanckou’s previous books. He was not an orphan, for one thing. But it takes place during the Marxist-Leninist revolution he lived through. (He moved from Africa to France in his early 20s, and has been teaching literature in the United States for the past 15 years, first at the University of Michigan and now at U.C.L.A.)
“I’m trying to create a world in which it’s going to be like a biography of my city,” Mr. Mabanckou said of his books. “People in the Congo like that I’m recalling the sea, the street, the prostitutes, the old names of the neighborhood. They want to have that kind of history, because the history of Africa, Francophone history, was written by France. It is not accurate.”
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