Author Description

THE BLACK SEA IN THE BIG LAKES, the 2021 winner of the Senghor Prize for best work of Francophone literature, shines a new light on recent fiction of the African immigrant experience in its portrayal of a woman caught between two worlds. Nili, the daughter of a Romanian mother and a Congolese father, was raised by her mother in Romania after her father had suddenly and mysteriously abandoned them. Now as a young woman, and pregnant, she travels back to Congo in search of her father to learn the reason behind his disappearance. As she travels, she recounts the story of her own violent past to her unborn son, and cautions him to break the cycle of violence and family strife engendered by his ancestry. Based in part on the author's own background as an African-Romanian, THE BLACK SEA IN THE BIG LAKES explores the characters' cultural displacement and loss as they search for their true home to find meaning behind their complex and wrenching past.