Alain Mabanckou at Alliance Francaise. Picture by Aranya Sen

The writer today only needs to “lay all his experiences on the table”, says Alain Mabanckou, winner of several prestigious literary awards for his six novels and six books of poetry in French.

The Congo-born LA-dwelling author — in town on an invitation from Alliance Française du Bengale — is not happy with his work being branded as Francophone African literature, or with African-origin writers being differentiated from other writers in French.

“A writer has a citizenship of his language. If I were writing in Hindi instead of French I could claim to be from here,” he explains.

But the fact that his prize-winning novel Memoirs of a Porcupine, African Psycho and other writings are being translated in 15 languages shows a revival of interest in French literature.

Born in 1966, Mabanckou spent his childhood in Pointe-Noire, Congo. “In school we were taught only French so that became my language,” he says.

Mabanckou did a law course at the University of Brazzaville and followed it up with a Masters in business law from Dauphine University, Paris. “Law was what my mother got me to study but I realised soon enough that that was not what I wanted. Writing was more like being me.”

After debuting with poetry, Mabanckou wrote his first novel Bleu-Blanc-Rouge, which was crowned the Grand Prix Littéraire d’Afrique Noire.

But it’s not just real life experiences that Mabanckou heaps on his table. Social, political and personal crises come coloured in myths as in Memoirs of a Porcupine.

In Memoirs, Mabanckou uses the African belief that every man has an animal alter ego to create a magical situation where a porcupine, the alter ego of a treacherous artisan in Congo, rebels by informing the entire village of his criminal deeds.

The book he is currently working on will take two more years to finish. “It is about prostitution, a major problem in my country. The central character is a woman, but the writing will be very, very different from what I have produced so far,” promises Mabanckou, who also teaches Francophone African literature in American universities.