Alain Mabanckou

(Congo-Brazzaville, 1966) is one of the best-known Franco-African writers. In novels such as Verre cassé, African Psycho and Black Bazaar he sketches his African youth and the life of the African inhabitants of Paris, the city where he went to study in 1989. In 2012 he returned to his birthplace Pointe-Noire. His novel Petit  Piment (Little Pepper, 2015) resulted from that trip. He very humorously describes the life of a boy who flees an orphanage to move to the coastal City of Pointe-Noire, where he lives among thieves and whores. The novel is dedicated to the boys of the Côte Sauvage, the edge of that city, with whom the author spoke. Mabanckou teaches French literature at the University of California Los Angeles. His work has been translated into more than ten languages.