Alain Mabanckou

Alain Mabanckou is a prize-winning, world-famous novelist, poet, and essayist from what is now considered Congo-Brazzaville. His many accolades include the Prix de la Société des Poètes Français and the prestigious Grand Prix de la Littérature from the Académie Française. Twice a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, his prose has been translated into close to twenty languages, including Catalan, English, Hebrew, Korean, Polish, and Spanish. The Guardian described him as “one of Africa’s greatest writers.” Mabanckou is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is a frequent guest on radio and TV shows in France and around the globe.