Verre Cassé is a regular at Le Crédit a voyagé, a shabby bar in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo. Its owner has asked him to compile the exploits and prowess of the bar's regulars, a den of outcasts and misfits living on the fringes of society. The novel Verre Cassé is the account of this rather special mission, which brings together a multitude of colorful characters, including the narrator himself. Behind this compilation of amusing and sometimes tragic anecdotes, there is a veritable multi-layered polyphony on Congolese society taken between tradition and modernity, orality and written language, as well as a whole series of cultural references to Hollywood cinema and French literature. Written in an invigorating, oral style, this novel is like a long monologue inspired as much by African oral tradition as by the logorrhea of a barfly! Verre Cassé is a truculent book, as funny as it is profound, and as erudite as it is lively!

Alain Mabanckou (b. 1966) is a prolific Franco-Congolese author of novels and poetry, who has been translated in many countries and has been Professor of French Literature at UCLA since 2006. He won the Prix Renaudot for Mémoires de porc-épic and was a professor at the prestigious Collège de France in Paris.