Alain Mabanckou (born 24 February 1966) is an author and journalist who currently resides in the United States.
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Alain Mabanckou was born in Congo-Brazzaville in 1966. He spent his childhood in the coastal village of Pointe-Noire where he received his baccalaureate in Letters and Philosophy at the Lycée Karl Marx. After preliminary law classes at The Marien-Ngouabi University in Brazzaville studying law, he received a scholarship to go to France at the age of 22. He already had several manuscripts, mostly collections of poems, which he started publishing three years later.
After receiving a post-graduate diploma in law at the Université Paris-Dauphine, he worked for about ten years for the group Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux, but dedicated himself more and more to writing after the publication of his first novel, Bleu-Blanc-Rouge (Blue-White-Red) which won him the Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire. After this he continued to regularly publish prose and well as poetry.
He’s mostly known for his novels, notably Verre Cassé (Broken Glass) which was unanimously praised by the press, critics and readers alike. Verre cassé has also been the subject of several theatrical adaptations. In 2006 he published Memoires de porc-épic (Memoirs of a Porcupine) which garnered him the Prix Renaudot, one of the highest distinctions in French literature. Broken Glass was published in English translation in 2009.
Starting in 2002 he taught Francophone Literature at the University of Michigan as an Assistant professor. After 3 years there he was hired in 2006 by the University of California Los Angeles where he is now a full professor in the French Department. He currently lives in Santa Monica, California.
His works are published in many languages including English, Hebrew, Korean, Spanish, Catalan and Norwegian. His only books translated into English are African Psycho (Serpent's Tail, UK, 2007), Broken Glass (Serpent's Tail, UK, 2009) and Memoirs of a porcupine (Serpent's Tail, UK, 2011), but several more will be released soon. His American publisher is Soft Skull Press in New York City.
In 2007 Mabanckou’s early poetry was re-published by Points-Seuil under the title Tant que les arbres s’enracineront dans la terre, as well as a book dedicated to James Baldwin, Lettre à Jimmy (Fayard) on the occasion of Baldwin’s death.
Alain Mabanckou is considered to be one of the most talented and prolific writers in the French language today and the first francophone sub-saharian African writer to be published by Gallimard in its prestigious "collection" called La Blanche.
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