Cola Cola Jazz, Kangni Alem

Héloïse, a young mixed-race woman who has never left her suburban home, knows nothing about her father, apart from the snippets of legend her mother has fabricated. Invited to Ti-Brava by her casual father, Héloïse is greeted by her African half-sister, Parisette. In the absence of their father, it is Parisette who introduces her to Ti-Brava, a small West African country shrouded by the Jurassic shadow of dictator Yamatoké. Héloïse and Parisette, the Frenchwoman and the Ti-Bravienne… Two halves of a kola nut, fitting together deliciously. Two ingenues in a turmoil dreamt up by a tropical Sade, who had indulged in jazz, comics and palm wine.

Born in Togo in 1966, Kangni Alem is an author, director, and actor. Founder of the Atelier Théâtre de Lomé, he won the Tchicaya U'Tamsi Prize in the Interafrican Theatre Competition in 1990. He now lives in Bordeaux. His writing, which explores the contradictions of his country's social memory, has earned him recognition and admiration as a "committed" author. Kangni Alem is the author of three plays ("La Saga des rois" and "Chemins de croix" published by Nouvelles Éditions Africaines du Togo, in 1991 and 1992, and "Nuit de cristal", Le Bruit des Autres, 1994), and collections of short stories ("La Gazelle s'agenouille pour pleurer", Éditions Acoria, coll. Fictivores, 2000). He also participated in the collection "Amours de villes, villes africaines" (co-published by Dapper - Ed. Fest'Africa, 2001), with a text on Lomé, the capital of his origins. "Coca Cola Jazz" is his first novel.