November 2021: an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the UK capsizes in the Channel, causing the deaths of 27 people on board. How and why did it happen?
- Longlisted
- The Man Booker International Prize 2017
- Published by Serpent's Tail
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Alain Mabanckou’s poetic carnival of a novel chronicles a riotous journey through the Pointe-Noire underworld in late 20th century Congo-Brazzaville
1970, the People’s Republic of Congo. In an orphanage near the bustling port of Pointe-Noire, Moses is terrorised by a pair of twins and, worse, the corrupt director. United against this common enemy, the three orphans escape to Pointe-Noire and join the Congolese Merry Men, a gang of petty thieves grifting among the Zairean prostitutes of the Trois-Cents quarter. But as the authorities continue to hound the Merry Men and the Trois-Cents girls, all this injustice pushes poor Moses over the edge.
Alain Mabanckou
Alain Mabanckou, nicknamed ‘the African Beckett’, grew up in Pointe-Noire, Republic of Congo, and studied law in Brazzaville and Paris
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Helen Stevenson
Helen Stevenson studied Modern languages at Oxford University, and has been translating literary texts from French to English for 25 years
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