Events at the Shop
Alain Mabanckou with Helen Stevenson - World Literature Weekend 2010
Friday 18 June 2010
The wit and energy of Congolese novelist Alain Mabanckou have been enlivening the French literary scene for many years, during which he’s won several major prizes, including the Prix Renaudot in 2006 for Mémoires de Porc-Epic. English readers can discover his inventiveness and exuberance in two of his novels. His African Psycho is an inept and chaotic serial killer thousands of miles removed from Easton Ellis’ Patrick Bateman. And in Broken Glass – shortlisted for the 2010 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize – the eponymous narrator, a disgraced school teacher and regular at the bar Credit Gone West, is asked by its landlord to fill a notebook with his customers' stories; the resultant outpouring, funny and irreverent as it is, becomes a wild reflection on storytelling as self-mythologising and the interplay between African and French literary culture.
Inside the Skin of the Writer
Listen now (18:24) | Download (MP3, 16.9MB)
America, America
Listen now (10:09) | Download (MP3, 9.3MB)
Francophony
Listen now (13:17) | Download (MP3, 12.2MB)
Porcupine
Listen now (14:46) | Download (MP3, 13.5MB)
Audience Questions
Listen now (16:09) | Download (MP3, 14.8MB)
Further Reading
If you enjoyed this event, you may also be interested in:
Chronic City - Jonathan Lethem in conversation with Tom McCarthy 