Bilingual MCAAlbert Russo
Biography
A bilingual author, Albert Russo writes in both English and French, his two ‘mother tongues’. He is the recipient of many awards, such as The American Society of Writers Fiction Award, The British Diversity Short Story Award, several New York Poetry Forum Awards, Amelia Prose and Poetry awards and the Prix Colette, among others. He has also been nominated for the W.B. Yeats and Robert Penn Warren poetry awards. His work, which has been praised by James Baldwin, Pierre Emmanuel, Paul Willems and Edmund White, has appeared worldwide in a dozen languages. His African novels have been favorably compared to V.S. Naipaul’s work, which was honored with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001 He is a member of the jury for the Prix Européen and sat in 1996 on the panel of the prestigious Neustadt Prize for Literature, which often leads to the Nobel Prize. His most recent novels: in English: ZANY, ZAPINETTE NEW YORK, MIXED BLOOD and ECLIPSE OVER LAKE TANGANYIKA all with Domhan Books (NY); in French: L’AMANT DE MON PÈRE (Ed. Le Nouvel Athanor), ZAPINETTE À NEW YORK, ZAPINETTE CHEZ LES BELGES, l’ANCETRE NOIRE, all three with Editions Hors Commerce (Paris).
Excerpted from Martin Tucker’s Preface to Albert Russo’s novels 'Mixed Blood' and ‘Eclipse over lake Tanganyika’ (both published by Domhan Books in New York).
“Albert Russo’s work has many distinctive qualities. 'Mixed Blood' and ‘Eclipse over lake Tanganyika’ are especially distinguished by Russo’s startingly precise grasp of the historic period of mid-twentieth-century Central Africa. In this sense, his work bears twinship to V.S. Naipaul’s (Nobel prize winner) 'A Bend in the River'. Such a time no longer exists because one history has changed and another has happened, and still another is happening under our ticking hours. Like his predecessor Naipaul, Russo has captured the attitudes of his white colonialists, his black politicians of various hues of moderation and extremity, and painted a seemingless timeless portrait of a naive American Peace Corps volunteer. (Perhaps naivity is the one constant in the history of change.) Again, like Naipaul, Russo is compassionate and satiric, but unlike his British counterpart, Russo holds out hope that messages of goodness and idealism and decency remain within hearing, that they remain to be recorded in a different and deeper key in another time. Rooted in a past time, ‘Mixed Blood’ and ‘Eclipse over lake Tanganyika’ have an undeniable relevance to contemporary time.”
Martin Tucker has published over twenty volumes of literary criticism. He is the editor of the prize-winning literary journal ‘Confrontation’, and the author of ‘Africa in Modern Literature’. He has also written a biography of Joseph Conrad and of Sam Shepard, both critically acclaimed, and has contributed to the Encyclopedia of American Literature (A Literary Guild Selection).
read Bilingual Poems
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DRAMATIS PERSONAE
They call me Gianni
They call me Jim
But also Dominic
In both genders
In every guise
Whether it be Gianni, Jim or Dominic
In the present tense as in the past
First or third person
We're talking of the same person
With the difference that each one
Speaks in another tongue
Confounding strangers
Claims the spiteful gossip
At times Gianni and Jim will be one and the same
At times they will oppose each other
Sometimes they might act as total strangers
And so it goes for both Dominics
The distance between them may be paper thin
Or else wide as the ocean
That which separates two languages
Or lies, mute, within the blood cells
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Mon nom est Gianni
Mon nom est Jim
Mais aussi Dominique
Dans les deux sens
Et donc dans tous les sens
Que se soit Gianni, Jim ou Dominique
Au present comme au passé
A la première personne ou à la troisième
Il s'agit de la même personne
A ceci près que chacune d'entre elles
Est marquée par le sceau d'une langue
L'assaut, diront les esprits chagrins
Tantôt Gianni et Jim se confondront
Tantôt ils s'opposeront
Tantôt ils ne se reconnaîtront plus
Et il en sera de même avec les deux Dominique
Parfois l’écart entre eux sera infime
Ou alors aussi vaste qu'un océan
Celui qui sépare les idiomes
Ou se mesure à la mixité du Sang
Albert Russo
Amor Latino
Amour fou
amour à mort
ti amo per l’eternità
amor y mas amor
la passion
le désamour
la haine
c’est la guerre
morto l’amore
non conta più nulla
sin amor
la vida no es vida
amore amore
senza respiro
meglio suicidarsi
chè morire
senza amore
mort de l’amour
mort pour de bon
amor, il nome di
Roma, Rome
la ville éternelle
car toujours
l’amour s’y renouvelle
Books
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