Bessora

Bessora is a writer born in Brussels. Daughter of a Gabonese diplomat and granddaughter of a Swiss confectioner, she and her works have met with growing acclaim in Europe, the United States and Africa. After a career in international finance in Geneva, she studied anthropology and wrote her first novel. Bessora has published, since 1999, a text a year on average, mainly in the group Gallimard. Her books have been translated into several languages.

Biography

Of her numerous stays abroad (Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, France, the United States, Gabon) and of her multiple origins (Gabon, Switzerland, France, Germany, Poland), Bessora removes a glance which gives to her writing a free, demanding, unclassifiable character.^[1] Having dreamed to be a stewardess, Bessora makes the school of the High commercial studies in Lausanne (Switzerland), then the Paris IX Dauphine university in Paris. After a degree in management and a master's degree in applied economy, she works some years in finance before changing course. Following a journey in South Africa, she resumes studies in anthropology in Paris, then publishes her first novel in 1999. She obtains a doctorate in anthropology in 2002, and continues to write novels. She’s compared to Queneau,^[2] or Sarraute.^[3]

She obtains the Fénéon Prize in 2001 for her novel Ink stains. The Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire is awarded to her in 2007 for her novel Pick Me pretty Sirs...

Selection of novels

• 53 cm, Le Serpent à Plumes, Paris, 1999
• Les Taches d'encre ( Ink Stains ), Le Serpent à Plumes, Paris, 2000 – (Fénéon Prize)
• Deux bébés et l'addition ( Two babies and the bill ), Le Serpent à Plumes, Paris, 2002
• Petroleum, Denoël, Paris, 2004
• Cueillez-moi jolis messieurs...( Pick me pretty sirs ), Gallimard, Paris, 2007
• Et si Dieu me demande, dites-Lui que je dors ( If God asks, tell Him I'm sleepling ), Gallimard, Paris, 2008

Short stories

• 7 secondes plus au nord ( 7 seconds north ), in Nouvelle Revue Française n° 587, Gallimard, 2008.
• Bionic Woman, in Ananda Devi (ed.), Les Balançoires, éditions Tropiques, Yaoundé, 2006.
• Le cru et le cuit, appropriation of Claude Lévi-Strauss's Le cru et le cuit , in Dernières nouvelles du colonialisme, Vent d'ailleurs, 2006
• Les Compagnies Low-Cost ( Low-Cost companies ), in Nouvelles mythologies, Seuil, Paris, 2007
• Courant d'air aux Galeries ( Draft in Galleries ), Eden productions, Paris, 2003

References

Sources

• "Bessora, a Writer with a Thirty-Eight Shoe Size", Adele King, in Wasafiri, 1747-1508, Volume 24, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 60 – 65.
• Bessora, in World Literature Today, Volume 75, 77, 79,81 ( 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007 )
• Bessora, in The French Review, Eilene Hoft-March, May 2009

External links

• Official website of Bessora