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The Lights of Pointe-Noire
Alain Mabanckou left Congo in 1989, at the age of twenty-two, not to return until a quarter of a century later. When he finally came back to Pointe-Noire, a bustling port town on the Congo?s southwestern coast, he found a country that in some ways had changed beyond recognition: The cinema where, as a child, Mabanckou gorged on glamorous American culture had become a Pentecostal church, and his secondary school has been renamed in honor of a previously despised colonial ruler.
But many things remain unchanged, not least the swirling mythology of Congolese culture that still informs everyday life in Pointe-Noire. Now a decorated writer and an esteemed professor at UCLA, Mabanckou finds he can only look on as an outsider in the place where he grew up. As he delves into his childhood, into the life of his departed mother, and into the strange mix of belonging and absence that informs his return to the Republic of the Congo, his work recalls the writing of V. S. Naipaul and André Aciman, offering a startlingly fresh perspective on the pain of exile, the ghosts of memory, and the paths we take back home.
But many things remain unchanged, not least the swirling mythology of Congolese culture that still informs everyday life in Pointe-Noire. Now a decorated writer and an esteemed professor at UCLA, Mabanckou finds he can only look on as an outsider in the place where he grew up. As he delves into his childhood, into the life of his departed mother, and into the strange mix of belonging and absence that informs his return to the Republic of the Congo, his work recalls the writing of V. S. Naipaul and André Aciman, offering a startlingly fresh perspective on the pain of exile, the ghosts of memory, and the paths we take back home.
280 pages, Paperback
First published January 3, 2013
15 people are currently reading
594 people want to read
About the author
Alain Mabanckou
87 books456 followersAlain Mabanckou was born in 1966 in Congo-Brazzaville (French Congo). He currently resides in Los Angeles, where he teaches literature at UCLA, having previously spent four years at the University of Michigan. Mabanckou will be a Fellow in the Humanities Council at Princeton University in 2007-2008. One of Francophone Africa's most prolific contemporary writers, he is the author of six volumes of poetry and six novels. He received the Sub-Saharan Africa Literary Prize in 1999 for his first novel, Blue-White-Red, the Prize of the Five Francophone Continents for Broken Glass, and the Prix Renaudot in 2006 for Memoirs of a Porcupine. He was selected by the French publishing trade journal Lire as one of the fifty writers to watch out for in the coming century. His most recent book is African Psycho.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
February 25, 2015
###I found brilliant###
The pictures after every chapter. Lovely! Each chapter is actually devoted either to a family member or to a place. I really appreciate the pictures at the end to illustrate the person or the point that was discussed previously.
###What to expect###
After his long absence from Congo, the author found that nothing has really changed, except for the people themselves. He revisited old places such as his former primary school, a former cinema he used to attend, his defunct mother’s house … At every stop along the author’s pilgrimage, we are acquainted with the author memories of the place and of course its actual state. His memories of Congo are truly dear to him and after a long time spent outside his country, I really appreciate the fact that his tone was not condescending. You actually get the sense that he loves this place and will always. The author also mentioned several time his awkward relation with his mother. She died several years after he left for France. Unfortunately, due to money constraint and other undisclosed reason, he could not attend her funeral. His mother sounded like a warrior to me. She survived being abandoned while she was pregnant, bought her own house and was doing business in those years. A great achievement! I recommend you this great memoir. The Africa I read about here, I love very much. Indeed, people are poor, but they are happy.
###Read here###: http://booksundertheneemtree.com/2015...
The pictures after every chapter. Lovely! Each chapter is actually devoted either to a family member or to a place. I really appreciate the pictures at the end to illustrate the person or the point that was discussed previously.
###What to expect###
After his long absence from Congo, the author found that nothing has really changed, except for the people themselves. He revisited old places such as his former primary school, a former cinema he used to attend, his defunct mother’s house … At every stop along the author’s pilgrimage, we are acquainted with the author memories of the place and of course its actual state. His memories of Congo are truly dear to him and after a long time spent outside his country, I really appreciate the fact that his tone was not condescending. You actually get the sense that he loves this place and will always. The author also mentioned several time his awkward relation with his mother. She died several years after he left for France. Unfortunately, due to money constraint and other undisclosed reason, he could not attend her funeral. His mother sounded like a warrior to me. She survived being abandoned while she was pregnant, bought her own house and was doing business in those years. A great achievement! I recommend you this great memoir. The Africa I read about here, I love very much. Indeed, people are poor, but they are happy.
###Read here###: http://booksundertheneemtree.com/2015...
September 12, 2021
Recensione originale: https://sonnenbarke.wordpress.com/202...
Alain Mabanckou torna in Congo, nella sua Pointe-Noire, dopo 23 anni di assenza, su invito dell’Institut Français. Non era tornato neanche per il funerale dell’amata madre, perché per molto tempo aveva preferito fingere che non fosse morta. Questo libro è il racconto dei suoi incontri in quella sua terra di origine ormai lontana, delle sue impressioni, dei suoi ricordi.
Bisogna dire che non ho ancora mai letto un romanzo di Mabanckou, quindi non posso giudicarlo come romanziere, ma sicuramente è un narratore sopraffino, quindi mi viene da pensare che anche i suoi romanzi siano ottimi. Sicuramente proverò a leggerli, perché lo stile di questo autore mi è piaciuto moltissimo. Mabanckou ha una scrittura leggera, non lirica, non altisonante, ma comunque in certo modo poetica: la poesia del quotidiano. Scrive veramente in maniera avvolgente e coinvolgente. Leggere questo libro è stato un piacere non solo per quello che racconta ma anche per come lo racconta.
Mabanckou se n’è andato dal Congo per studiare in Francia, e per l’appunto non tornava da una vita. Trova una Pointe-Noire cambiata ma tutto sommato sempre uguale, e lo stesso vale per amici e parenti. Alcune cose non ci sono più, altre sono cambiate, per esempio l’amato cinema Rex è diventato una chiesa. I parenti, in particolar modo la famiglia del padre, sembrano interessati perlopiù ai soldi portati da quel loro parente che ha fatto carriera letteraria all’estero. Ma non è così per tutti, fortunatamente: molti di loro sono genuinamente felici di rivederlo.
Il capitolo più bello è quello in cui Mabanckou ricorda nonna Hélène, che non era veramente sua nonna benché lui la chiamasse così. Una donnina energica, che viveva per preparare da mangiare agli innumerevoli parenti, in particolar modo ai bambini. Se ti trovavi nei paraggi, nonna Hélène non transigeva: dovevi mangiare da lei e ti rimpinzava così tanto che rischiavi seriamente di sentirti male. Quando Mabanckou torna in Congo, nonna Hélène è ormai vecchissima e sta morendo, ma aspetta una “donna bianca” che la verrà a prendere per portarla con sé nell’aldilà. E trova un segno di questa donna bianca nella compagna dell’autore. Un capitolo divertentissimo ma anche dolcissimo.
È un libro davvero bello, mi è piaciuto molto vedere Pointe-Noire con gli occhi sia di Mabanckou bambino, sia di Mabanckou adulto che non la vedeva da più di vent’anni. Si notano i cambiamenti, ma si nota anche ciò che resta uguale, come ad esempio la felicità dei bambini.
Consigliatissimo, e spero di proseguire al più presto la conoscenza di questo autore.
Alain Mabanckou torna in Congo, nella sua Pointe-Noire, dopo 23 anni di assenza, su invito dell’Institut Français. Non era tornato neanche per il funerale dell’amata madre, perché per molto tempo aveva preferito fingere che non fosse morta. Questo libro è il racconto dei suoi incontri in quella sua terra di origine ormai lontana, delle sue impressioni, dei suoi ricordi.
Bisogna dire che non ho ancora mai letto un romanzo di Mabanckou, quindi non posso giudicarlo come romanziere, ma sicuramente è un narratore sopraffino, quindi mi viene da pensare che anche i suoi romanzi siano ottimi. Sicuramente proverò a leggerli, perché lo stile di questo autore mi è piaciuto moltissimo. Mabanckou ha una scrittura leggera, non lirica, non altisonante, ma comunque in certo modo poetica: la poesia del quotidiano. Scrive veramente in maniera avvolgente e coinvolgente. Leggere questo libro è stato un piacere non solo per quello che racconta ma anche per come lo racconta.
Mabanckou se n’è andato dal Congo per studiare in Francia, e per l’appunto non tornava da una vita. Trova una Pointe-Noire cambiata ma tutto sommato sempre uguale, e lo stesso vale per amici e parenti. Alcune cose non ci sono più, altre sono cambiate, per esempio l’amato cinema Rex è diventato una chiesa. I parenti, in particolar modo la famiglia del padre, sembrano interessati perlopiù ai soldi portati da quel loro parente che ha fatto carriera letteraria all’estero. Ma non è così per tutti, fortunatamente: molti di loro sono genuinamente felici di rivederlo.
Il capitolo più bello è quello in cui Mabanckou ricorda nonna Hélène, che non era veramente sua nonna benché lui la chiamasse così. Una donnina energica, che viveva per preparare da mangiare agli innumerevoli parenti, in particolar modo ai bambini. Se ti trovavi nei paraggi, nonna Hélène non transigeva: dovevi mangiare da lei e ti rimpinzava così tanto che rischiavi seriamente di sentirti male. Quando Mabanckou torna in Congo, nonna Hélène è ormai vecchissima e sta morendo, ma aspetta una “donna bianca” che la verrà a prendere per portarla con sé nell’aldilà. E trova un segno di questa donna bianca nella compagna dell’autore. Un capitolo divertentissimo ma anche dolcissimo.
È un libro davvero bello, mi è piaciuto molto vedere Pointe-Noire con gli occhi sia di Mabanckou bambino, sia di Mabanckou adulto che non la vedeva da più di vent’anni. Si notano i cambiamenti, ma si nota anche ciò che resta uguale, come ad esempio la felicità dei bambini.
Consigliatissimo, e spero di proseguire al più presto la conoscenza di questo autore.
March 25, 2018
A great find for DRC.
The author's personal story as the backdrop to the novel makes it engaging and very relatable.
The author's personal story as the backdrop to the novel makes it engaging and very relatable.
March 11, 2019
This is the second novel I read from Congolese author Alain Mabanckou and I liked this one much better than the novel "Black Bazar". This novel is an autobiography of the author as he recounts his childhood in Pointe-Noire when he returns there after 20 years of absence. The novel is divided in 2 parts:
- the first part, set during the first week of his return, the author writes about his childhood there through the description of the life of the people who mattered to him most such as his mother, his step-dad, his aunts, his uncles, and other members of his extended family;
- the second part, set during the second and last week of his stay, the author writes about his childhood through the places that most mattered to him and/or he remembered such the the Rex Cinema....
Althgouh the novel is autobiographic and doesn't contain any exotic adventures, the story is so well written that it captivates readers. The author came from a tribe, who moved from a village to Pointe Noire, he was raised not only by his mother and step father, but by the entire extended family from his mother's side. Through this biography, the author describes indirectly to western audience how an African child is not raised by his parents alone, but by the whole village composed by a large extended family. Furthermore, the importance of ancient traditions that survived the immigration from the village to the city of Pointe-Noire. The author added photography of people and places mentioned in the book. T
The story follows the stories of individuals and places with respect to the author and his memories, not a straight chronological order; therefore, a reader might get confused. The family is so large that readers just like the author can be lost on who's who. I liked reading the first part of the novel more than the second.
- the first part, set during the first week of his return, the author writes about his childhood there through the description of the life of the people who mattered to him most such as his mother, his step-dad, his aunts, his uncles, and other members of his extended family;
- the second part, set during the second and last week of his stay, the author writes about his childhood through the places that most mattered to him and/or he remembered such the the Rex Cinema....
Althgouh the novel is autobiographic and doesn't contain any exotic adventures, the story is so well written that it captivates readers. The author came from a tribe, who moved from a village to Pointe Noire, he was raised not only by his mother and step father, but by the entire extended family from his mother's side. Through this biography, the author describes indirectly to western audience how an African child is not raised by his parents alone, but by the whole village composed by a large extended family. Furthermore, the importance of ancient traditions that survived the immigration from the village to the city of Pointe-Noire. The author added photography of people and places mentioned in the book. T
The story follows the stories of individuals and places with respect to the author and his memories, not a straight chronological order; therefore, a reader might get confused. The family is so large that readers just like the author can be lost on who's who. I liked reading the first part of the novel more than the second.
July 13, 2017
C'est le 1er livre que je lis de cet auteur et c'est dommage car il y a plein de références à ses précédents ouvrages. Celui-ci est très bibliographique, il revient à Ponte-Noire de nombreuses années après avoir quitté le Congo et parcourt la ville où plein de souvenirs lui reviennent. Chaque chapitre a pour thème un personnage ou un lieu et finit par une photo ce qui ancre le livre dans la réalité.
Il y a beaucoup de nostalgie et de tendresse quand l'auteur se remémore son enfance et sa famille même s'il est maintenant déconnecté d'eux puisqu'il vit loin et ne les a pas revus depuis longtemps. J'ai trouvé ça touchant et sympathique avec plein de personnages haut en couleur.
Il y a beaucoup de nostalgie et de tendresse quand l'auteur se remémore son enfance et sa famille même s'il est maintenant déconnecté d'eux puisqu'il vit loin et ne les a pas revus depuis longtemps. J'ai trouvé ça touchant et sympathique avec plein de personnages haut en couleur.
March 28, 2024
I would give it 2.5 if I could give half a star. I read this book in French and found it interesting in that it was about the author going back to his home, Pointe Noire, for the first time in 23 years. The book was a collation of different memories of his childhood, as well as of conversations that he had with people when he came back.
I would have liked to understand more about why he didn’t go back in 23 years, why he missed his mother and Papa Roger’s funeral, and why he didn’t go to visit their graves. I think that because I didn’t understand this, and because of how detailed he was in recording the conversations he had with his just-reunited family (almost mining them for literary success), I found it hard to trust his intentions. For the first time that I can remember, I was more focussed on the approach of the writer than the actual content of the book itself.
The stories and perspectives were interesting, especially with the combination of spiritual elements and superstitions, like the prophecy his mother received about having a son that would abandon her; the hungry sea with “mami water”; his sisters for whom plates of food were left, etc. Ultimately though, I feel like he was writing for a western gaze. I would be interested to read other books by this author, especially a novel, and maybe I would enter into the writing in a more trusting manner!
I would have liked to understand more about why he didn’t go back in 23 years, why he missed his mother and Papa Roger’s funeral, and why he didn’t go to visit their graves. I think that because I didn’t understand this, and because of how detailed he was in recording the conversations he had with his just-reunited family (almost mining them for literary success), I found it hard to trust his intentions. For the first time that I can remember, I was more focussed on the approach of the writer than the actual content of the book itself.
The stories and perspectives were interesting, especially with the combination of spiritual elements and superstitions, like the prophecy his mother received about having a son that would abandon her; the hungry sea with “mami water”; his sisters for whom plates of food were left, etc. Ultimately though, I feel like he was writing for a western gaze. I would be interested to read other books by this author, especially a novel, and maybe I would enter into the writing in a more trusting manner!
August 21, 2017
Memoir of man who returns to his childhood home in the Congo after 25 years living in Paris. Learned a lot about Congolese culture and traditions through his stories about his family and encounters he had.
September 13, 2025
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: A dazzling meditation on home-coming and belonging from one of "Africa's greatest writers" (The Guardian) and the Man Booker International Prize finalist and Grand Prize Winner at the 2015 French Voices Awards
Alain Mabanckou left Congo in 1989, at the age of twenty-two, not to return until a quarter of a century later. When he finally came back to Pointe-Noire, a bustling port town on the Congo's southwestern coast, he found a country that in some ways had changed beyond recognition: The cinema where, as a child, Mabanckou gorged on glamorous American culture had become a Pentecostal church, and his secondary school has been renamed in honor of a previously despised colonial ruler.
But many things remain unchanged, not least the swirling mythology of Congolese culture that still informs everyday life in Pointe-Noire. Now a decorated writer and an esteemed professor at UCLA, Mabanckou finds he can only look on as an outsider in the place where he grew up. As he delves into his childhood, into the life of his departed mother, and into the strange mix of belonging and absence that informs his return to the Republic of the Congo, his work recalls the writing of V. S. Naipaul and André Aciman, offering a startlingly fresh perspective on the pain of exile, the ghosts of memory, and the paths we take back home.
"This is a beautiful book, the past hauntingly reentered, the present truthfully faced, and the translation rises gorgeously to the challenge." —Salman Rushdie
I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.
My Review: "You can't go home again," in the truly deathless formulation of justly neglected writer Thomas Wolfe. It is the reason the memoir exists. Humans need frameworks, limits on their sense of their life. Our brains are pattern-making and storytelling machines. It's a survival tactic..."is that weird shadow a tree in the moonlight or a predator?" kept your ancestors alive. Author Mabanckou, not a lot younger than I am, felt the need to reckon with Home in a story. Well, what do you expect from a prolific novelist and poet who makes his living from teaching UCLA students about literature?
In just about two hundred pages, he tells us the story of his two-week return to Pointe-Noire, left twenty-five years ago so of course much changed. In the course of returning, the emigrant/exile/fugitive from home will notice the many changes time has wrought. I expect almost all of us, whether we left our hometowns or home countries or not, can relate to the "OMG the old {thing} is now {opposite thing}!" internal conversation. Not that many of us use that near-universal experience to relive and explain our upbringing to others. Author Mabanckou tells us of his family, how they moved to the city of Pointe-Noire on the Congolese coast from a small village in pursuit of safety and opportuunity. The manner of family order is something US families could definitely learn from. No child is more attended to, more broadly exposed to the worldviews of others, than those raised as he was in his mother's extended family. The family moved, not just his mother and stepfather, so she was not stranded in a new city, left to her own devices to raise and support her child.
Compare and contrast, y'all.
Growing up in a time and place where your assumptions are formed in a conversation with the assumptions of others, all of whom possess a stake in your life, is a beginning to be envied, to be emulated; it results in a less monadic, less greedy, less needy life as an adult. Author Mabanckou has lived in Europe and the US for decades, he knows the issues and differences that monadic living brings because he was raised outside them.
Thinking of home as he returns to the place where it was allows him to give us twenty-five separate récits we'll agree to call chapters. In his head with him, we look into his past with a fond eye, seeing ghosts of places and of lives we once fully filled but now can't do more than tell stories to an audience about. It's part of getting old. It's part of defining yourself for yourself. it's part of accepting what some simply can not: Some of us are outsiders by nature. Author Mabanckou, in leaving Pointe-Noire then returning after a life away from it, embraced the outsider role. Many of the best storytellers do.
What struck me forcibly was the absence of any explanation, or hint of a reason, why he did not go home for a quarter-century. I thought it might have to do with the familial expectations that this "rich" relative would be able to (and willing to) give them a lot of material security. The way he navigated expectations and demands is the matter of the second half of the book. It was perhaps more important to Author Mabanckou than to me, but it was not a very involving way to end a very short tale in my opinion.
Hence the lack of a fifth star for this very well-written, very interesting story.
The Publisher Says: A dazzling meditation on home-coming and belonging from one of "Africa's greatest writers" (The Guardian) and the Man Booker International Prize finalist and Grand Prize Winner at the 2015 French Voices Awards
Alain Mabanckou left Congo in 1989, at the age of twenty-two, not to return until a quarter of a century later. When he finally came back to Pointe-Noire, a bustling port town on the Congo's southwestern coast, he found a country that in some ways had changed beyond recognition: The cinema where, as a child, Mabanckou gorged on glamorous American culture had become a Pentecostal church, and his secondary school has been renamed in honor of a previously despised colonial ruler.
But many things remain unchanged, not least the swirling mythology of Congolese culture that still informs everyday life in Pointe-Noire. Now a decorated writer and an esteemed professor at UCLA, Mabanckou finds he can only look on as an outsider in the place where he grew up. As he delves into his childhood, into the life of his departed mother, and into the strange mix of belonging and absence that informs his return to the Republic of the Congo, his work recalls the writing of V. S. Naipaul and André Aciman, offering a startlingly fresh perspective on the pain of exile, the ghosts of memory, and the paths we take back home.
"This is a beautiful book, the past hauntingly reentered, the present truthfully faced, and the translation rises gorgeously to the challenge." —Salman Rushdie
I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.
My Review: "You can't go home again," in the truly deathless formulation of justly neglected writer Thomas Wolfe. It is the reason the memoir exists. Humans need frameworks, limits on their sense of their life. Our brains are pattern-making and storytelling machines. It's a survival tactic..."is that weird shadow a tree in the moonlight or a predator?" kept your ancestors alive. Author Mabanckou, not a lot younger than I am, felt the need to reckon with Home in a story. Well, what do you expect from a prolific novelist and poet who makes his living from teaching UCLA students about literature?
In just about two hundred pages, he tells us the story of his two-week return to Pointe-Noire, left twenty-five years ago so of course much changed. In the course of returning, the emigrant/exile/fugitive from home will notice the many changes time has wrought. I expect almost all of us, whether we left our hometowns or home countries or not, can relate to the "OMG the old {thing} is now {opposite thing}!" internal conversation. Not that many of us use that near-universal experience to relive and explain our upbringing to others. Author Mabanckou tells us of his family, how they moved to the city of Pointe-Noire on the Congolese coast from a small village in pursuit of safety and opportuunity. The manner of family order is something US families could definitely learn from. No child is more attended to, more broadly exposed to the worldviews of others, than those raised as he was in his mother's extended family. The family moved, not just his mother and stepfather, so she was not stranded in a new city, left to her own devices to raise and support her child.
Compare and contrast, y'all.
Thinking back to my childhood, when we hid in the lantana fields near the Agostinho Neto airport and hunted iridescent beetles or fished for minnows from the banks of the River Tchinouka, I replied to my friend, with his "Parisian Negro" arrogance:
"These children aren’t in a paradise of poverty. Here, look at the photo: that tire, those flip-flops…that’s what makes them happy…flip-flops to walk in, the tire they can all climb aboard like a motorbike big enough to carry all their wildest dreams. Every day my nephews and nieces walk out in a long line down the rue du Louboulou. Their childhood knits them together, they wouldn’t swap it for all the world. They drink from a small glass, but it’s their own. Your glass is big, but it’s not yours, and each time you want to drink from it, you have to ask for permission."
Growing up in a time and place where your assumptions are formed in a conversation with the assumptions of others, all of whom possess a stake in your life, is a beginning to be envied, to be emulated; it results in a less monadic, less greedy, less needy life as an adult. Author Mabanckou has lived in Europe and the US for decades, he knows the issues and differences that monadic living brings because he was raised outside them.
Thinking of home as he returns to the place where it was allows him to give us twenty-five separate récits we'll agree to call chapters. In his head with him, we look into his past with a fond eye, seeing ghosts of places and of lives we once fully filled but now can't do more than tell stories to an audience about. It's part of getting old. It's part of defining yourself for yourself. it's part of accepting what some simply can not: Some of us are outsiders by nature. Author Mabanckou, in leaving Pointe-Noire then returning after a life away from it, embraced the outsider role. Many of the best storytellers do.
What struck me forcibly was the absence of any explanation, or hint of a reason, why he did not go home for a quarter-century. I thought it might have to do with the familial expectations that this "rich" relative would be able to (and willing to) give them a lot of material security. The way he navigated expectations and demands is the matter of the second half of the book. It was perhaps more important to Author Mabanckou than to me, but it was not a very involving way to end a very short tale in my opinion.
Hence the lack of a fifth star for this very well-written, very interesting story.
November 5, 2014
Good slice of life from the "Going home is rarely easy" file. Alain Mabanckou is a Congolese treasure. Lumières de Pointe-Noire provides enough graphic description to take you there without leaving home. I could almost smell the prawns at Chez Gaspard.
July 24, 2015
Slightly more formal, even stilted writing than usual but helps place the more joyful, uninhibited "Tomorrow I'll be 20" into context. Still awesome..I forgot my copy on a flight and will be going to purchase another ASAP AND will read again soonest. Enjoy...
February 10, 2016
Ayant raté de peu l’opportunité de me rendre au Congo pour voir un ami qui a fait ses études en France, ce livre a trouvé une résonnance toute particulière en moi, m’ouvrant les portes d’un pays que je ne connaissais pas !
May 20, 2024
At the age of 22, Alain Mabanckou left his native Congo in 1989 to study in France after receiving a scholarship. His mother died in 1994; his father a decade later. In 2006 he began teaching at UCLA where he lives today. He finally returned to Pointe-Noire on the Congolese coast with his girlfriend in 2012 to work on this memoir at the French Cultural Centre. While he was there he caught up with family, old friends, a school teacher, and recalled his youth although much had changes in almost thirty years.
It’s beautiful and very surreal. On the jacket cover of the book, Salman Rushdie also called it a “beautiful book, the past hauntingly reentered, the present truthfully faced.” I can’t add much to this other than to agree with Rushdie. However I can add my two cents worth on the surreal. Plus there are photos to add to the charm and surrealism.
Born an only child, Mabanckou made up a story that he had two sisters. His mother was a business hustler, his father had two wives and it became a challenge when father added a lover as well. Grandmother was dying but upon seeing his white girlfriend, she miraculously recovers. Wherever Mabanckou goes, he is always giving away money in envelopes. Why? After visiting his former teacher, a little beer money. A war veteran, he buys him lunch (although the veteran claimed his wallet was stolen). To his family, he is the rich foreigner so they expect the better of him. Superstition, with that weird mix of fanatic religion and making money makes for strange bedfellows.
And so the stories unroll with strangeness. He visits an old neighborhood called “the 300.” Brothels charged 500 CFA francs but some ambitious Zairean women lowered their prices to 300 and made themselves well known. While wandering here an older prostitute thinks he is a journalist and demands to tell her story. Yep, it’s rather sad. She got paid too but not for her usual services.
He visits an old movie theatre now rented to born again religious people. They demand that he leave and not to take photos when the theatre’s owner recognizes Mabanckou from their youth. They go down memory lane together.
Politics, colonialism, and French culture are constant companions. As he notes, the city appears more favourable than ever to their French colonists, renaming schools, bridges and roads after their occupiers. Perhaps they needed a change from the civil war laden with Marxist names? They tried to ban English after selling their oil to the Americans but stuck with French. How odd?
I can honestly say I know very little about this country, let alone the author. I only came to hear of him from a recent Writers and Company podcast. It was an enjoyable read and it’s always good to broaden one’s views. I may never see Congo but at least I know a little more through the eyes of one of its expatriates. I may even track down one of his novels…
3.5 rating
It’s beautiful and very surreal. On the jacket cover of the book, Salman Rushdie also called it a “beautiful book, the past hauntingly reentered, the present truthfully faced.” I can’t add much to this other than to agree with Rushdie. However I can add my two cents worth on the surreal. Plus there are photos to add to the charm and surrealism.
Born an only child, Mabanckou made up a story that he had two sisters. His mother was a business hustler, his father had two wives and it became a challenge when father added a lover as well. Grandmother was dying but upon seeing his white girlfriend, she miraculously recovers. Wherever Mabanckou goes, he is always giving away money in envelopes. Why? After visiting his former teacher, a little beer money. A war veteran, he buys him lunch (although the veteran claimed his wallet was stolen). To his family, he is the rich foreigner so they expect the better of him. Superstition, with that weird mix of fanatic religion and making money makes for strange bedfellows.
And so the stories unroll with strangeness. He visits an old neighborhood called “the 300.” Brothels charged 500 CFA francs but some ambitious Zairean women lowered their prices to 300 and made themselves well known. While wandering here an older prostitute thinks he is a journalist and demands to tell her story. Yep, it’s rather sad. She got paid too but not for her usual services.
He visits an old movie theatre now rented to born again religious people. They demand that he leave and not to take photos when the theatre’s owner recognizes Mabanckou from their youth. They go down memory lane together.
Politics, colonialism, and French culture are constant companions. As he notes, the city appears more favourable than ever to their French colonists, renaming schools, bridges and roads after their occupiers. Perhaps they needed a change from the civil war laden with Marxist names? They tried to ban English after selling their oil to the Americans but stuck with French. How odd?
I can honestly say I know very little about this country, let alone the author. I only came to hear of him from a recent Writers and Company podcast. It was an enjoyable read and it’s always good to broaden one’s views. I may never see Congo but at least I know a little more through the eyes of one of its expatriates. I may even track down one of his novels…
3.5 rating
June 17, 2018
3.5/5 stars)
After 25 or so years away from home, Mabanckou returns to Pointe-Noire. To the memories and scenes that have formed the backdrop of many of his novels. To his family who he hasn't seen in that whole time. To confront the fact that when his mother died, he didn't come home. He wasn't there to burry her. The book, in some places takes the form or a journal entry, recording events as if they almost played out real time. It is raw in some places.
It is clear that Mabanckou is wrestling with whatever feelings haunt him from his mothers death. In a sense, the book is his public form of mourning. It almost feels but not quite like the book is his comeuppance. But not quite.
Despite the fact that Mabanckou processes a lot of memories and emotions and thoughts, he is guarded throughout. We don't really get to know his true feelings about the death. And how he reconciles himself to it all. And that is what had me fascinated with this book. His thoughts are between the lines. Carefully protected from us. Sharing everything else except that - that he keeps private to himself.
If you have read "Tomorrow I will be Twenty", a lot about this book will be familiar (as the former was a fictionalized account of his childhood. And we also learn about the inspiration for some of the characters and events in Black Moses.
I didn't realise this book was a memoir when I picked it up... which is just as well as I am not a big fan of memoirs/autobiographies. I can be really picky when it comes to those. Thankfully this book did the genre justice. It is not ground-breaking but it is very interesting nonetheless. Mabanckou's writing is effortless as ever.
Recommended for those who like memoirs.
After 25 or so years away from home, Mabanckou returns to Pointe-Noire. To the memories and scenes that have formed the backdrop of many of his novels. To his family who he hasn't seen in that whole time. To confront the fact that when his mother died, he didn't come home. He wasn't there to burry her. The book, in some places takes the form or a journal entry, recording events as if they almost played out real time. It is raw in some places.
It is clear that Mabanckou is wrestling with whatever feelings haunt him from his mothers death. In a sense, the book is his public form of mourning. It almost feels but not quite like the book is his comeuppance. But not quite.
Despite the fact that Mabanckou processes a lot of memories and emotions and thoughts, he is guarded throughout. We don't really get to know his true feelings about the death. And how he reconciles himself to it all. And that is what had me fascinated with this book. His thoughts are between the lines. Carefully protected from us. Sharing everything else except that - that he keeps private to himself.
If you have read "Tomorrow I will be Twenty", a lot about this book will be familiar (as the former was a fictionalized account of his childhood. And we also learn about the inspiration for some of the characters and events in Black Moses.
I didn't realise this book was a memoir when I picked it up... which is just as well as I am not a big fan of memoirs/autobiographies. I can be really picky when it comes to those. Thankfully this book did the genre justice. It is not ground-breaking but it is very interesting nonetheless. Mabanckou's writing is effortless as ever.
Recommended for those who like memoirs.
February 8, 2025
“These children, though, find points of light in the harshness of their lives. It took me a while to understand that they were just as happy as I was when I was their age, and found my happiness in a plate of hot food in the kitchen, in the growing grass, in the tweeting of a couple of courting birds, or in the poster for an Indian film showing at the Rex cinema, where we started queuing at ten in the morning in the hope of getting into the three o’clock showing…
Thinking back to my childhood, when we hid in the lantana fields near the Agostinho Neto airport and hunted iridescent beetles or fished for minnows from the banks of the River Tchinouka, I replied to my friend, with his ‘Parisian Negro’ arrogance:
‘These children aren’t in a paradise of poverty. Here, look at the photo: that tyre, those flip-flops…that’s what makes them happy…flip-flops to walk in, the tyre they can all climb aboard like a motorbike big enough to carry all their wildest dreams. Every day my nephews and nieces walk out in a long line down the rue du Louboulou. Their childhood knits them together, they wouldn’t swap it for all the world. They drink from a small glass, but it’s their own. Your glass is big, but it’s not yours, and each time you want to drink from it, you have to ask for permission. And alas, that permission is never granted…”
Thinking back to my childhood, when we hid in the lantana fields near the Agostinho Neto airport and hunted iridescent beetles or fished for minnows from the banks of the River Tchinouka, I replied to my friend, with his ‘Parisian Negro’ arrogance:
‘These children aren’t in a paradise of poverty. Here, look at the photo: that tyre, those flip-flops…that’s what makes them happy…flip-flops to walk in, the tyre they can all climb aboard like a motorbike big enough to carry all their wildest dreams. Every day my nephews and nieces walk out in a long line down the rue du Louboulou. Their childhood knits them together, they wouldn’t swap it for all the world. They drink from a small glass, but it’s their own. Your glass is big, but it’s not yours, and each time you want to drink from it, you have to ask for permission. And alas, that permission is never granted…”
February 12, 2022
لماذا نعود إلى الأوطان؟...
أضواء الراس الأسود يعتبر سيرة ذاتية للكاتب الآن مابانكو عن عودته الي مدينة الرأس الأسود المدينة التي نشأ فيها في الكونغو قبل سفره لفرنسا يعود بعد وفاة والدته بعضة أعوام في زيارة سريعة ليحتك بذكريات طفولته ومراهقته وأفراد عائلته الكبيرة بعد غياب ٢٦ عام تغيرت فيها اشياء كثيرة...
تجربتي الاولي مع الكاتب الآن مابانكو اللي يعتبر من أبرز الكتاب الفرانكونيين وحصلت أعماله على العديد من الجوائز الأدبية في فرنسا ومن الأسماء المرشحة دائما للحصول على جائزة نوبل... وتعتبر أيضا في نفس الوقت تجربتي الأول مع المترجم والكاتب عادل أسعد الميري..
الكاتب اسلوبه رشيق للغاية تلبست كتاباته ذلك الشعور بالحنين فاستطاع ان ينقل لنا مشاعره وذكرياته وذكريات بلاده و تلك الحواديت التي شكلت خياله ككاتب أفريقي وفي نفس الوقت لن يتسرب خط الواقعية من يد الكاتب فظل حتى النهاية متمسكا به ومتراقصا بين الواقعية وسحر الذكريات و الشجن وحالة الاغتراب التي عاشها مع بقية أفراد عائلته ونظرتهم إليه كغريب عنهم لا يشبههم ومتنصلا منهم.....
اعتقد انني تأخرت في اكتشاف ذلك الكاتب وتأخرت أيضا في اكتشاف المترجم عادل اسعد الميري اللي قدم ترجمة متقنة وعذبة تليق بهذا النص النوستالجي الذي كتبه الكاتب الآن مابانكو ليوثق مشاعره ورحلته الأخيرة الي مدينة الرأس الأسود المدينة التي احتضنته واحتضنت عائلته
⭐⭐⭐⭐
أضواء الراس الأسود يعتبر سيرة ذاتية للكاتب الآن مابانكو عن عودته الي مدينة الرأس الأسود المدينة التي نشأ فيها في الكونغو قبل سفره لفرنسا يعود بعد وفاة والدته بعضة أعوام في زيارة سريعة ليحتك بذكريات طفولته ومراهقته وأفراد عائلته الكبيرة بعد غياب ٢٦ عام تغيرت فيها اشياء كثيرة...
تجربتي الاولي مع الكاتب الآن مابانكو اللي يعتبر من أبرز الكتاب الفرانكونيين وحصلت أعماله على العديد من الجوائز الأدبية في فرنسا ومن الأسماء المرشحة دائما للحصول على جائزة نوبل... وتعتبر أيضا في نفس الوقت تجربتي الأول مع المترجم والكاتب عادل أسعد الميري..
الكاتب اسلوبه رشيق للغاية تلبست كتاباته ذلك الشعور بالحنين فاستطاع ان ينقل لنا مشاعره وذكرياته وذكريات بلاده و تلك الحواديت التي شكلت خياله ككاتب أفريقي وفي نفس الوقت لن يتسرب خط الواقعية من يد الكاتب فظل حتى النهاية متمسكا به ومتراقصا بين الواقعية وسحر الذكريات و الشجن وحالة الاغتراب التي عاشها مع بقية أفراد عائلته ونظرتهم إليه كغريب عنهم لا يشبههم ومتنصلا منهم.....
اعتقد انني تأخرت في اكتشاف ذلك الكاتب وتأخرت أيضا في اكتشاف المترجم عادل اسعد الميري اللي قدم ترجمة متقنة وعذبة تليق بهذا النص النوستالجي الذي كتبه الكاتب الآن مابانكو ليوثق مشاعره ورحلته الأخيرة الي مدينة الرأس الأسود المدينة التي احتضنته واحتضنت عائلته
⭐⭐⭐⭐
February 8, 2025
This book grew on me as it went along. Part 1 is meandering; it's a series of vignettes. They seem disconnected although all are linked by the author's memories of childhood and youth, triggered by his decades-later visit to his hometown of Pointe-Noire (I like the demonym: the Pontenegrins). Many people come and go and come again: parents, adoptive parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, relatives of various shades.
Part 2 was more compelling to me. The author wanders the streets, haunts, hotels and taverns of Pointe-Noire, bumps into various colourful characters, encounters old friends, mourns the passing of old localities (the Rex cinema, now a pentecostal church). The city came a bit more alive for me in this part, including its frightening coast, not visited by locals for superstitious reasons and also because real sudden breakers come thundering in from the Atlantic without warning and can lead to drowning.
Read as part of my Quest to Read the World: country of the Republic of Congo-Brazzaville. (It will take me some time and another book finally to get the distinction from the Democratic Republic of Congo into my brain. Maybe I will read David van Reybrouck's Congo: een geschiedenis next.)
It happens to fit the #52 bookclub reading challenge 2025, prompt 'cover font in a primary colour.'
Part 2 was more compelling to me. The author wanders the streets, haunts, hotels and taverns of Pointe-Noire, bumps into various colourful characters, encounters old friends, mourns the passing of old localities (the Rex cinema, now a pentecostal church). The city came a bit more alive for me in this part, including its frightening coast, not visited by locals for superstitious reasons and also because real sudden breakers come thundering in from the Atlantic without warning and can lead to drowning.
Read as part of my Quest to Read the World: country of the Republic of Congo-Brazzaville. (It will take me some time and another book finally to get the distinction from the Democratic Republic of Congo into my brain. Maybe I will read David van Reybrouck's Congo: een geschiedenis next.)
It happens to fit the #52 bookclub reading challenge 2025, prompt 'cover font in a primary colour.'
March 15, 2018
'The Lights of Pointe-Noire' is a fascinating memoir of Mabanckou's journey back to his home country of the Republic of Congo after 25 years living abroad in France and America. Mabanckou is vulnerable as he retells the often tragic story of his family's history and present, which reflects the turbulence the Congo has gone through. Despite this, there is a strong sense of Congolese culture and identity which I enjoyed learning more about, particularly how spirituality and animism is interwoven into their everyday existence. As a reader I felt as though I was taking the journey with the writer, which I don't usually experience when reading non-fiction.
I would love to read more from Mabanckou and other writers from this region. Highly recommend this book!
I would love to read more from Mabanckou and other writers from this region. Highly recommend this book!
August 5, 2018
Maybe because I can read french with ease, this didn't feel as engaging. Throughout the book I kept thinking how it would be more engaging to read the original french version of this book, and I might do that in the future. The English version reads very detached and not involved as a semi autobiographical piece of literature would feel like. towards the end of the book, zealously is translated/ written as jealously in the book, which is clearly incorrect. However, it is a good read for Pointe Noire, republic of Congo and I'd love to read more about this country, and city.
October 10, 2023
*الرأس الأسود، هو اسم مدينة في دولة الكونغو
آلان مابانكو ، الكاتب الفرنسي وأستاذ الأدب بجامعة ميتشجان، يحكي في كتابه "أضواء الرأس الأسود" ذكرياته في تلك المدينة، ولادته كابن وحيد لأمه، في مجتمع تعلو فيه قيمة المرأة بعدد ولادتها.. والده بالتبني وعلاقته الأبوية معه، عن مجتمع الكونغو، حياته، معتقداته، تأثير الخرافات والسحر عليه، الاستعمار الفرنسي للبلد، الجيران، المدرسة...
كتاب جميل، لبلد أجهله!
٣٠٢ صفحة
آلان مابانكو ، الكاتب الفرنسي وأستاذ الأدب بجامعة ميتشجان، يحكي في كتابه "أضواء الرأس الأسود" ذكرياته في تلك المدينة، ولادته كابن وحيد لأمه، في مجتمع تعلو فيه قيمة المرأة بعدد ولادتها.. والده بالتبني وعلاقته الأبوية معه، عن مجتمع الكونغو، حياته، معتقداته، تأثير الخرافات والسحر عليه، الاستعمار الفرنسي للبلد، الجيران، المدرسة...
كتاب جميل، لبلد أجهله!
٣٠٢ صفحة
November 18, 2017
Too short to stay in the mind long after reading. Small vignettes of life in Pointe Noir are interspersed with the author recounting his relationship, sometimes estranged, with his family. All in all I found the topic quite interesting but the brevity of the work gives one the feeling of a lack of substance.
September 17, 2021
Petit livre plutôt mignon. À ne pas lire comme un roman. Chaque chapitre (25 en tout) est un petit récit en soit. ils font un tout car ils sont des exemples vivants de réactions de gens et de soi-même lorsqu’on retourne chez soi, dans une petite ville d’un pays telle que Pointe-Noire (Congo).
Historiettes des plus savoureuses. Merci!
Historiettes des plus savoureuses. Merci!
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February 25, 2022Un récit autobiographique (accompagné de quelques photos) où l'auteur revisite des souvenirs de son enfance mais aussi de son retour au Congo, pour une visite, après 23 ans à vivre en France. J'ai bien aimé la plume de l'auteur. Il a une façon de raconter une anecdote ou une histoire qui accroche et garde l'attention du lecteur.
August 17, 2017
I liked the book a lot, but can rate it only 4 1/2 stars. Sometimes it was had to understand,, but I learned a lot about this town in the Congo and the people who live there. I read an advance reading copy, so that might have been the reason for my confusion.
Read
February 2, 2021(Republic of Congo)
Very moving reflection on childhood, memory, place and relationships. Definitely got more out of some chapters over others- more lucid maybe, easier to follow or simply more interesting.
Very moving reflection on childhood, memory, place and relationships. Definitely got more out of some chapters over others- more lucid maybe, easier to follow or simply more interesting.
May 1, 2018
Comme toujours, Alain Mabanckou est magistral sur ce livre.
May 25, 2019
A nice story about a return to the author’s childhood home in Congo-Brazzaville without the tired tropes and stereotypes of ‘African’ existence.
November 25, 2019
Amazingly written book. It was such a page turner.
June 1, 2020
Den mest spesielle boka jeg har lest av en afrikansk forfatter om å komme tilbake til hjembyen. Jeg er helt annet og finere bilde enn jeg har lest tidligere. Sterkt anbefalt!
June 3, 2021
4.5
Tendresse 💛
Tendresse 💛
June 19, 2021
Un libro lleno de recuerdos y emociones. Al final del libro me emociono y lloro, ¿por qué?
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