Alain Mabanckou. Counterpoint/Soft Skull, $15 trade paper (176p) ISBN 978-1-59376-601-6
Originally written on the 20th anniversary of James Baldwin's death in 1987, this book by Mabanckou (Memoirs of a Porcupine) addresses Baldwin in the second person. Much of the first half recounts Baldwin's biographic details, illuminating the pre–Ci
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Alain Mabanckou, Author, Helen Stevenson, Translator , trans. from the French by Helen Stevenson. Counterpoint/Soft Skull $13.95 (165p) ISBN 978-1-59376-273-5
Set in a sad-sack Congolese bar called Credit Gone West, this ingeniously satirical novel by Congolese poet and novelist Mabanckou (African Psycho
) creates a microcosm of postcolonial African experience through the tales of sodden bar patrons....
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Alain Mabanckou, trans. from the French by Alison Dundy. Indiana Univ., $17 trade paper (136p) ISBN 978-0-253-00791-9
Half-truth heightens dramatic irony in Mabanckou's award-winning novel as he explores the enormous gap between cultural expectations and realities within the Parisian world of African dandies. Traveling between Paris and his small African village...
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Alain Mabanckou, Author, Christine Schwartz Hartley, Translator Soft Skull Press $13.95 (145p) ISBN 978-1-933368-50-4
A Congolese writer in his early 40s, Mabanckou teaches at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and has won numerous French prizes for previous novels; he makes his U.S. debut with this slim, witty monologue of a would-be serial killer. Whereas...
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Alain Mabanckou, trans. from the French by Helen Stevenson. New Press (Perseus, dist.), $23.95 (208p) ISBN 978-1-62097-293-9
A small book with a big narrative voice, this wacky new novel by Mabanckou follows the existential misfortunes of an orphan whose “kilometrically extended name” means “Thanks be to God, the black Moses is born on the earth of our ancestors.” Things...
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Alain Mabanckou, trans. from the French by Dominic Thomas. Indiana Univ, $16 trade paper (86p) ISBN 978-0-253-03583-7
In this slender but intellectually dense collection of 12 essays, Franco-Congolese novelist Mabanckou (Black Moses) reveals and reshapes notions of black identity, arguing that in today’s global community, “identity goes far beyond notions of...
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Alain Mabanckou, trans. from the French by Bill Johnston. Indiana Univ., $20 (160p) ISBN 978-0-253-04388-7
Set in the fictionalized African country of Vietongo, this uneven novel from Mabanckou (Black Moses) follows Hortense Lloki, a young mother from the nation’s north living as an outsider in her husband’s southern homeland. When a southern general...
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Alain Mabanckou, trans. from the French by Helen Stevenson. New Press, $23.99 (256p) ISBN 978-1-62097-606-7
Congo-born French writer Mabanckou’s intimate tale (after Broken Glass) chronicles the days following the assassination of the Republic of Congo’s Communist leader Marien Ngouabi in 1977. The 13-year-old narrator, Michel, is a book-smart kid who...
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