Alain Mabanckou

Pikku Pippuri on veijarimainen kasvutarina ja absurdi poliittinen satiiri Kongon 1970-luvun sosialistisen vallankumouksen kuohuista.Pikku Pippuri kasvaa Dieudonne Ngulmumakon rautaisin ottein johtamassa orpokodissa, kunnes vallankumous jakaa kaikille uudet kortit. Pikku Pippuri ottaa kohtalonsa omiin käsiinsä ja karkaa satamakaupunki Pointe-Noireen. Onni johdattaa hänet Mama Fiat 500: ja tämän kymmenen tytön huomaan ja aran nuorukaisen elämä hymyilee, kunnes kaikki jälleen suistuu raiteiltaan.Vastoinkäymisestä toiseen ajautuvan Pikku Pippurin naivistisessa seikkailussa sekä puidaan Kongon historiaa ja etnisiä jännitteitä että kirjoitetaan uudelleen Oliver Twistin, Mooseksen ja Robin Hoodin tarinaa.Alain Mabanckou (s.1966, Brazzavillen Kongo) on moneen kertaan palkittu ranskankielisen kirjallisuusmaailman supertähti ja vuoden 2015 Man Booker International -finalisti. Pikku Pippuri (Petit Piment, 2015) on Mabanckoun yhdestoista teos. Mabanckou opettaa ranskankielistä kirjallisuutta UCLA:ssa Los Angelesissa.

"An exuberantly dark first novel." ? NPR's Fresh Air w/ Terry Gross **Nominated for the Man Booker International Prize 2016** **Winner of the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Debut African Fiction** Two friends, one a budding writer home from abroad, the other an ambitious racketeer, meet in the most notorious nightclub?Tram 83?in a war-torn city-state in secession, surrounded by profit-seekers of all languages and nationalities. Tram 83 plunges the reader into the modern African gold rush as cynical as it is comic and colorfully exotic, using jazz rhythms to weave a tale of human relationships in a world that has become a global village. **One of Flavorwire's 33 Must-Read Books for Fall 2015** Fiston Mwanza Mujila (b. 1981, Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo) is a poet, dramatist, and scholar. Tram 83 is his award-winning and much raved-about debut novel that caused a literary sensation when published in France in August 2014.

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.

Written on the twentieth anniversary of James Baldwin's death, Letter to Jimmy is African writer Alain Mabanckou's ode to his literary hero and an effort to place Baldwin's life in context within the greater African diaspora. Beginning with a chance encounter with a beggar wandering along a Santa Monica beach--a man whose ragged clothes and unsteady gait remind the author of a character out of one of James Baldwin's novels-- Mabanckou uses his own experiences as an African living in the US as a launching pad to take readers on a fascinating tour of James Baldwin's life. As Mabanckou reads Baldwin's work, looks at pictures of him through the years, and explores Baldwin's checkered publishing history, he is always probing for answers about what it must have been like for the young Baldwin to live abroad as an African-American, to write obliquely about his own homosexuality, and to seek out mentors like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison only to publicly reject them later. As Mabanckou travels to Paris, reads about French history and engages with contemporary readers, his letters to Baldwin grow more intimate and personal.He speaks to Baldwin as a peer--a writer who paved the way for his own work, and Mabanckou seems to believe, someone who might understand his experiences as an African expatriate.

Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize 2015 Buttologist is down on his uppers. His girlfriend, Original Colour, has cleared out of their Paris studio and run off to the Congo with a vertically challenged drummer known as The Mongrel. She's taken their daughter with her. Meanwhile, a racist neighbour spies on him something wicked, accusing him of 'digging a hole in the Dole'. And his drinking buddies at Jips, the Afro-Cuban bar in Les Halles, pour scorn on Black Bazaar, the journal he keeps to log his sorrows. There are days when only the Arab in the corner shop has a kind word; while at night his dreams are stalked by the cannibal pygmies of Gabon. Then again, Buttologist wears no ordinary uppers. He has style, bags of it (suitcases of crocodile and anaconda Westons, to be precise). He's a dandy from the Bacongo district of Brazzaville - AKA a sapeur or member of the Society of Ambience-makers and People of Elegance. But is flaunting sartorial chic against tough times enough for Buttologist to cut it in the City of Light?

All human beings, says an African legend, have an animal double. Some doubles are benign, others wicked. This legend comes to life in Alain Mabanckou's outlandish, surreal, and charmingly nonchalant "Memoirs of a Porcupine."When Kibandi, a boy living in a Congolese village, reaches the age of 11, his father takes him out into the night and forces him to drink a vile liquid from a jar that has been hidden for years in the earth. This is his initiation. From now on, he and his double, a porcupine, become accomplices in murder. They attack neighbors, fellow villagers, and people who simply cross their path, for reasons so slight that it is virtually impossible to establish connection between the killings. As he grows older, Kibandi relies on his double to act out his grizzly compulsions, until one day even the porcupine balks and turns instead to literary confession.Winner of the Prix Renaudot, France's equal to the National Book Award, Alain Mabanckou is considered one of the most talented writers today. He was selected by the French journal "Lire" as one of fifty writers to watch this coming century. And as Peter Carey suggests, he "positions himself at the margins, tapping the tradition founded by Celine, Genet, and other subversive writers." In this superb and striking story, Mabanckou brings new power to magical realism, and is sure to excite American audiences nationwide.

I morgen blir jeg tjue er historien om Michel som vokser opp i utkanten av Pointe-Noire, Kongo-Brazzaville under landets marxistiske styre i 1960- og 70-årene. På skolen må han resitere presidentens taler feilfritt og lære geografikartet utenat. Hos onkel René må han høre belærende taler om produksjonsmidler og proletariat. Men i baren Vakker kveld danser menn og kvinner til rytmisk musikk, og i gata sloss de største gutta så støvet virvler. Michel løper over asfalten og føler fotsålene brenne, han lytter til Stemmen fra Amerika og leser farens bøker i skjul. Levningene etter kolonitiden preger språk og drømmer og gjør jakten på identitet kompleks. Michels uutslukkelige nysgjerrighet blir veien til egen frihet og selvstendighet.

Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize 2015 The history of Credit Gone West, a squalid Congolese bar, is related by one of its most loyal customers, Broken Glass, who has been commissioned by its owner to set down an account of the characters who frequent it. Broken Glass himself is a disgraced alcoholic school teacher with a love of French language and literature which he has largely failed to communicate to his pupils but which he displays in the pages of his notebook. The notebook is also a farewell to the bar and to his fellow drinkers. After writing the final words, Broken Glass will go down to the River Tchinouka and throw himself into its murky waters, where his lamented mother also drowned. Broken Glass is a Congolese riff on European classics from the most notable Francophone African writer of his generation.