Böcker av Alain Mabanckou

A moving meditation on home, home-coming and belonging from Francophone Africa's most important writer.

Awakening on top of his own grave after a force like a hurricane has swept him up and turned him around, Liwa Ekimakingaï, whose name means 'Death was afraid of me' must come to terms with his new reality. Abruptly deceased at the age of twenty-four and trapped forever in flared purple trousers, he encounters the other late residents of Frère Lachaise cemetery, all of whom have their own complex histories of life and death. Against all ghostly advice. Liwa makes his way back to his childhood home in Ponte Noire to see his devoted grandmother one last time. Disturbing rumours and political corruption swirl together with Liwa's jumbled memories of his last night on earth, leaving him to solve the riddle of his own untimely demise. Dealing with the Dead is a darkly humorous and phantasmagorical tale of ambition, community and forces beyond human control by the foremost chronicler of Congolese history.

Translation of: Maemoires de porc-aepic.

A hopeful, music-infused poetry collection from Congolese poet Alain Mabanckou.

This tale of wild adventure reveals the dashed hopes of Africans living between worlds. When Moki returns to his village from France wearing designer clothes and affecting all the manners of a Frenchman, Massala-Massala, who lives the life of a humble peanut farmer after giving up his studies, begins to dream of following in Moki's footsteps. Together, the two take wing for Paris, where Massala-Massala finds himself a part of an underworld of out-of-work undocumented immigrants. After a botched attempt to sell metro passes purchased with a stolen checkbook, he winds up in jail and is deported. Blue White Red is a novel of postcolonial Africa where young people born into poverty dream of making it big in the cities of their former colonial masters. Alain Mabanckou's searing commentary on the lives of Africans in France is cut with the parody of African villagers who boast of a son in the country of Digol.

The award-winning author of Black Moses is at his satiric best in this novel the catalogs the pain and suffering caused by the ravages of civil war.Set in the imaginary African Republic of Vietongo, The Negro Grandsons of Vercingetorix begins when conflict breaks out between rival leaders and the regional ethnic groups they represent. Events recorded in a series of notebooks under the watchful eye of Hortense Lloki show how civil war culminates in a series of outlandish actions perpetrated by the warring parties' private militias-the Anacondas and the Romans from the North who have seized power against Vercingetorix (named after none other than the legendary Gallic warrior who fought against Caesar's army) and his Little Negro Grandsons in the South who are eager to regain control. Translated into English for the first time, this novel provides a gritty slice of life in an active war zone."e;Nearly twenty years removed from its French publication, Mabanckou's aptitude for characterization and his unflinching glimpse of plight echo within every movement of Vercingetorix . . . With The Negro Grandsons of Vercingetorix, Mabanckou stresses that even as violence is an accomplice to life, perseverance is synonymous."e; -World Literature Today

Gregoire Nakobomayo, a petty criminal, has decided to kill his girlfriend Germaine. Luckily, he has a mentor to call on, the far more accomplished serial killer Angoualima. The fact that Angoualima is dead doesn't prevent Gregoire from holding lengthy conversations with him. Little by little, Gregoire interweaves Angoualima's life with his own.

Michel is ten years old, living in Pointe Noire, Congo, in the 1970s. His mother sells peanuts at the market, his father works at the Victory Palace Hotel, and brings home books left behind by the white guests. Planes cross the sky overhead, and Michel and his friend Lounes dream about the countries where they'll land.

Offers an account of a Black dandy trying to cut it in Paris.

Broken Glass is a Congolese riff on European classics from the most notable Francophone African writer of his generation.