Born in Pointe-Noire in Congo-Brazzaville, Alain Mabanckou teaches today in the United States. Translator, editor, writer, documentary filmmaker, he is the author of numerous essays and novels including porcupine memory (Renaudot Prize in 2006). He just published The elongated trade Editions du Seuil, a fable on the world of the dead and a satire on the world of the living.
“ Liwa Ekimakingaï spent her childhood and continues to live with her grandmother, Mâ Lembé, because her mother, Albertine, died giving birth to her. He is employed as a cook at the Victory Palace hotel in Pointe-Noire. And he waits to meet love. An evening of 15 August, when the country’s independence is celebrated, he brings together his finery, barely bought in the afternoon, and extravagant enough to go clubbing. At the edge of the dance floor, the beautiful Adeline seems unreachable. However, she accepts his advances, without however compromising herself. She will sign her end…
The novel is a rewind into the life and final hours of the young man, who attends his own four-day wake and funeral. Immediately buried, he emerges from his grave. To take revenge ?
In the background, the city of Pointe-Noire and its cemeteries – in particular the Cimetière des Riches, where everyone would dream of having a burial but where the places are very expensive, and that known as Frère-Lachaise, for the whole -coming of which Liwa is a part.
In this great social, political and visionary novel, the class struggle continues into the kingdom of the dead, where they are also strangely alive. » (Presentation of editions of the Threshold)