Alain Mabanckou
The Department of French and Italian of Indiana University-Bloomington presents a lecture by the writer
Alain Mabanckou
Pour Une Littérature-Monde en Langue Française
Friday, October 19, 2007
3:30 - 5:30 pm
College Arts and Humanities
Institute
1211 Atwater Ave
About the Lecture
On March
15, 2007, the literary
supplement of the popular
French newspaper Le
Monde featured
a text signed by 44 writers,
entitled For
a World Literature in French. The concise
but powerful manifesto
sparked a heated debate
in both French and Francophone
literary circles. Is French
literature today written
mostly outside of France?
Has fiction, after decades
of Parisian lethargy and
lack of inspiration, been
revived by writers from
the Caribbean and Africa?
And why is the “death
of Francophone literature” — announced
as such by the authors
of the manifesto, among
whom one notices names
as diverse as Tahar Ben
Jelloun, Maryse Condé, Édouard
Glissant, Nancy Huston,
JMG Le Clézio, Alain
Mabanckou, and Abdourahman
A. Waberi — necessary
for the “birth of
World Literature”?
Lecture delivered in French. Q&A in French and English.
About the Speaker
Alain
Mabanckou was born in Congo-Brazzaville.
In 2005 he was the recipient
of the Prix des Cinq Continents
de la Francophonie, Prix
Ouest-France/Étonnants
Voyageurs and Prix RFO
du livre for his novel
Verre
Cassé (Seuil).
The following year he was
awarded the prestigious
Prix Renaudot for Mémoires
de porc-épic (Seuil,
2006).
In addition to his novelistic work, Alain Mabanckou has just published an essay dedicated to the writer James Baldwin, « Lettre a Jimmy » (Fayard, 2007) and several volumes of poetry recently collected under the title « Tant que les Arbres s'enracineront dans la terre » (Points-Seuil, 2007).
He has taught at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and currently holds the position of Professor of Francophone Literature at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA). To know more about the work of Alain Mabanckou, please visit http://www.alainmabanckou.net/.
Support for the visit
This
event is made possible
through a New Perspectives
Grant from the New Frontiers
in Arts & Humanities
Program funded by the Lilly
Foundation. Additional
support from the Mary-Margaret
Barr Koon Fund of the Department
of French & Italian.
For more information on this event, please contact Prof. Oana Panaïté at opanaite @indiana.edu.
If you have a disability and need assistance, accommodations can be made to meet most needs. Please call 855-5458 for assistance.
