Guardian Artangel Books podcast: Alain Mabanckou in A Room for London

A Room for London is a small living space in the shape of the Roi des Belges - the boat in Joseph Conrad's novella The Heart of Darkness , which has been moored on the top of the South Bank as part of the Cultural Olympiad. For four days every month, as part of a year-long project by Artangel , a writer takes up residence, tasked only with writing an essay on the theme of London, rivers and/or Conrad. Join the seventh resident, Alain Mabanckou – award-winning novelist and professor of literature at UCLA – as he meditates on the bloody colonial history of Congo-Brazzaville, where he was born and Conrad's novel is set.