Léonora Miano was born in Douala in Cameroon. She moved to France in 1991,[1] where she first settled in Valenciennes and then in Nanterre to study American Literature. She published her first novel, Dark Heart of the Night, which was well received by French critics, receiving six prizes: Les Lauriers Verts de la Forêt des Livres, Révélation (2005), the Louis Guilloux prize (2006), the Prix du Premier Roman de Femme (2006), the René-Fallet prize (2006), the Bernard-Palissy prize (2006), and the Cameroonian Excellence prize (2007). The Lire magazine awarded it with the title of the best first French novel in 2005.
In the spring of 2008, Léonora Miano published five novels in the « Étonnants classiques » collection of the Flammarion Group. The novels are grouped under the title, Afropean et autres nouvelles.
According to Daniel S. Larangé, Miano's work has the particularity of creating an afropéenne literature that is aware of the transformations of the world and of humanity. She defends the afropéenne identity at a time of globalization, which could regenerate French culture through the bias French-speaking literature. Daniel S. Larangé also adds that "jazzy writing" is based on a popular and musical culture that integrates impromptu rhythms and rhapsodies specific to jazz.
In 2013, Léonora Miano won the Prix Femina for La Saison de l'Ombre which recounts, in keeping with Yambo Ouologuem's Devoir de Violence, the beginning of the slave trade. The novel, rich in emotions, would be a parable of globalization which leads to the exploitation of humanity as a product of consumption.
In 2018, Satoshi Miyagi directed Révélation, the first part of a trilogy on the history of slavery called Red in Blue, published in 2011. Léonora Miano, a specialist in the colonial event, chose Satoshi Miyagi as the director because his Japanese culture is distant from the history of transatlantic slavery. It was the writer's desire to avoid "cultural appropriation" by a Westerner. The contrast between the familiar story for a Western spectator and the aesthetic distance (dissociation of voice and body inherited from Japanese theatre) creates a surprise and goes beyond the confrontation between Africa and Europe.
Her writing has won several literary awards, including the Louis Guilloux Prize (2006), the Montalembert Prize (2006), the René Fallet Prize (2006), the Bernard Palissy Prize (2006), the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens (2006) and the Prix Fémina (2013).[2]
She criticized the foreword added to the English translation of her 2005 first novel, Dark Heart of the Night, calling it "full of lies";[3][4] in 2012 Zukiswa Wanner, however, based on reading Dark Heart of the Night rated Miano as one of her top five African writers (alongside H. J. Golakai, Ondjaki, Chika Unigwe and Thando Mgqolozana), describing Miano's work as "brilliant".[5]
(age 51)
