How did Alain Mabanckou, the author of Verre cassé [Broken Glass], make the French language his own? In Brazzaville, with difficult French dictées, then by devouring San Antonio and Victor Hugo.

Why did you choose to write in French?

Alain Mabanckou: For me, it's natural to write in this language. I've always thought there was no linguistic conflict between the French language and me. And it seemed natural to me to use this language. When I was growing up, French was a street language just like Lingala. It was the language of administration. It was the language of educated people. It was also the language in the market where we pretended to be grownup by speaking French. If I write in French, it's because all the African languages I know are oral languages. The only literary texts I had read at the beginning were texts in French, even when they were English-speaking writers. The usefulness of the French language is also that it allows French-speaking Africans to read Africans who write in English, especially the Nigerians: Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka. Starting from that, French becomes a language that federates. The colonized can use it against the colonizer and see what is happening to their brothers. It is a bridge to discover another world. Some people say that we should abandon it because it is a language of colonization, but without French I would never have understood Boubacar Boris Diop. He'll be speaking Wolof and I'll be speaking Lingala. If he writes in Wolof-- which he did for his last novel-- I can't read it, I don't understand his universe. You can even plot against France using the French language.

Do you feel the language as a foreign object?

I believe the language belongs to us. It belongs to everyone. Once a writer has a language, it's something that belongs to him, which is in him from then on. There's not even any question about writing in French. It's an inspiration, an instrument, like English for people like Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, Naipaul. For them, too, English is a colonial language, but they have transformed it in a way that makes it something that can astonish the English themselves. These authors bring the weight of their universe [into English] and give the language some fresh air.

What were your first literary emotions?

I was fascinated by French poetry: Lamartine, Musset, Baudelaire. These poems struck me from adolescence onward. I would read them in the form of extracts in the Lagard et Michard [textbooks]. The same with Victor Hugo. You saw him in the photo with his beard. You discovered his sad fate. His daughter who drowned with her husband. The man who was hunted, the exile. You wanted to be part of the life of these authors. I said to myself: "His life is like mine." A writer functions by imitaion. By the way, Victor Hugo himself wanted to be Chateaubriand. His poetry spoke to me. Mine is essentially familial. It speaks of the death of my mother. Of the sister I would have loved to have, instead of being an only child.

In your novel Verre cassé (pub. Le Seuil, 2005), the characters are pursued by bad luck.

Yes, it's a sort of hidden autobiography. The main problem is the fact that Broken Glass (the name of the main character, an alcoholic writer) makes the decision on his own to sacrifice himself to go join his mother. The novel also talks about nostalgia and exile. I too had to leave. I could not return to Congo-Brazzaville because of the civil war....And if you live in France, you are automatically considered an opponent. I lived in France for 13 years.

Who are the African writers who have marked you the most?

The Guinean Camara Laye, the author of L'Enfant noir [The Black Child]. Editions Plon has asked me to write the preface for the new edition of the novel. How ironic! At school, I was whipped because I couldn't do the dictée of L'Enfant noir. If you made five mistakes, you got five blows with the stick. It was unlucky because sometimes the best one in the class had only one mistake. The master still had to hit him, even if he didn't do it as enthusiastically as for the one who had 25 mistakes. At the time, there was not a lot of African literature in the program. We read Germinal by Zola, Terre des hommes by  Saint-Exupéry, Les mains sales by Sartre. We studied mainly French literature. It was at university that I began to discover African literature. I was a law student....

How did you come in contact with those books?

Thanks to my father. He was a porter at a hotel in Pointe-Noire [the economic capital of Congo-Brazzaville]. When clients left books at the hotel, he would bring them home. My father did not know how to read, but he adored books. He thought it was important for his son to have books. He brought me back lots of novels. In particular the work of Frédéric Dard and of San Antonio. Without my father, I would certainly never have become a writer.

Don't African writers have a tendency to write books aimed especially to please the French public?

There is a sort of allegiance. In fact, the readership of an African writer is 99% European. It is not only due to the fact that books are expensive. In Africa, we have cultural centers. Even if the book is there, there needs to be a culture of reading. Sometimes it's because Europeans have read and appreciated something that an African will read this or that work. If an African book is successful, it's often because it corresponds to what Europe expects from an African writer. That's the case for Je suis noir et je n'aime pas le manioc (Gaston Kelman, pub. Max Milo)[I'm black and I don't like manioc root]. They'll say, "This is funny, this black man has broken the cliché about black people."

Isn't it frustrating to have to write for Westerners?

Yes, it would be nice to have more readers in Africa. But the advantage in Africa is that one copy is read by at least ten people. Besides, there is a real change now with the spread of paperbacks. Black authors are no longer stuck in the African collection. It's time for African literature to be grown up. For it to stop whining.

The act of writing is a solitary exercise. Is it accepted in Africa?

African life is essentially a life a bit suffocated by the community aspect. The individual is erased in society, even if that is starting to change. Everything has to be done in connection with the group. The act of writing is in its essence a selfish act, since you have to withdraw to reflect. One can't do that on a continent where people are constantly walking in on you. So, that paralyzes creativity. If you withdraw, they'll say you are sick, misanthropic, asocial. An African writer who lives on the contintent calls up mistrust. Writers down there live in a sort of interior exile.

--Interview by Pierre Cherruau, Courrier International