All human beings, says an African legend, have an animal double.
The author of several novels as well as six books of poetry, he received the Subsaharan African Literature Prize for "Blue-White-Red" and the Prix Renaudot for " Memoirs of a Porcupine .".
He currently lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches literature at UCLA.
About author(s): Alain Mabanckou was born in 1966 in the Congo.
Throughout his life Kibandi relies on his double to act out his grizzly compulsions, until one day even the Porcupine baulks, and turns instead to literary confession.
They attack neighbours, fellow villagers, people who simply cross their path.
From now on he, and his double, a porcupine, become accomplices in murder.
This is his initiation.
When Kibandi, a boy living in a Congolese village, reaches the age of eleven, his father takes him out into the night, and forces him to drink a vile liquid from a jar which has been hidden for years in the earth.
Some are benign, others wicked.
All human beings, says an African legend, have an animal double
