Born 1966, Congo, Alain Mabanckou is a prolific Francophone Congolese poet and novelist whose wordplay, philosophical bent, and sometimes sly and often absurd sense of humour resulted in his being known in France as “the African Samuel Beckett.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). He currently lives in LA, where he teaches literature at UCLA. He is the author of six volumes of poetry and six novels. He is the winner of the Grand Prix de la Littérature 2012, and has received the Subsaharan African Literature Prize and the Prix Renaudot. His previous books include African Psycho, Broken Glass, Memoirs of a Porcupine and Black Bazaar. In 2015 he was listed as a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize.