Alain Mabanckou was born in 1966 in Congo. An award-winning novelist, poet, and essayist, Mabanckou currently lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches literature at UCLA. Among his acclaimed novels areAfrican Psycho; Broken Glass; Black Bazaar; and Tomorrow I Will Be Twenty, a fictionalized retelling of Mabanckou's childhood in Congo. In 2015, Mabanckou was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize.Helen Stevenson is the author of three novels and has worked as a translator for Faber & Faber and Serpent’s Tail. Since taking up full-time writing, she regularly reviews forThe Independent. She now lives in London.
