About this Event
Come to the Goethe-Institut London to hear directly from debut novelist Raphaëlle Red whose road novel's language and depth of feeling has been turning heads in both Germany and France!
She will be joined in conversation by Sophie Marie Niang, Adikou’s English translator and an academic at King’s College, London.
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Adikou is a mesmerizing debut road novel that explores the ghosts of the colonial past, the complexities of mixed-race identity, and the unsettling search for a sense of home.
The novel follows a young French-Togolese woman in her twenties named Adikou. Her origins are hazy, her family history is deeply fractured, and she barely knows how to properly pronounce her own name. All her life, society has pressured her to categorise herself—demanding she check a box for "black," "white," or "fifty-fifty". Overwhelmed by this structural pressure and a deep, bubbling anger during a stifling summer in Paris, Adikou flees.
She boards a flight to Lomé, Togo, the homeland of her estranged father, whom she barely knows. Unsure of exactly what she is looking for, she faces relentless questioning from everyone she encounters—about her race, her solo travels as a woman, and the root of her anger. Accompanied by a nameless narrator who observes her like a shadow (describing her alternately as a lizard and a vulture), Adikou’s quest expands far beyond Togo.
Her journey takes her along the West African coast, through a past student trip from the North to the South of the United States, and into the streets of New York and Atlanta. Navigating memories of slavery, the aftermath of colonialism, and fractured family ties, Adikou attempts to piece together an identity from the fragments of history and the elusive words of her missing father.
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Raphaëlle Red was born in Paris and grew up in Berlin. Adikou was published in French (Grasset) and in German (Rowohlt, trans. Patricia Klobusiczky) and in 2025 won Raphaëlle Red and Patricia Klobusiczky the coveted Prix PREMIERE of the Institut français. Her first non fiction – and English original – book, Safe Space. Finding Safety in Solidarity and Self-Determination will be published by Seagull Books in December 2026.
Sophie Marie Niang is a writer, researcher and translator based in North London. She teaches social sciences at King's College London. Sophie is currently developing a monograph entitled Irrepressible Futures: Black Refusal and Prefiguration in Contemporary France which interrogates developments in black cultural practices in France over the past decade.
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Goethe-Institut London Library, 50 Exhibition Road, London, United Kingdom
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