The term ‘Afropean’ could be considered yet another neologism in a world where multiple belonging has become a fashion. Coined by the well-travelled American musician David Byrne (Thomas and Hitchcott, 2014: 3), its leading voice is francophone Cameroonian novelist Léonora Miano. She wrote the short story ‘Afropean Soul’ and has since become a common reference for theorists seeking to understand the position of authors who inhabit the frontier or border. In the French context, the claims of Miano and others to belong to a variety of continents, not just countries, has a particular resonance. Claims to be ‘Afropean’ go one step further in bringing together Africa and Europe and taking the very idea of nationality out of the equation. Perhaps it is not surprising that Miano should take this step, given the artificial nature of European-created nation states in Africa and the history of interethnic rivalry there, as well as the evolving state of a Europe in which over half of the nation states are part of a sociopolitical union which allows free movement and employment opportunities.

Meanwhile, in France, the notion of multiple or hyphenated identities is rarely discussed; and the ‘postcolonial’ has only recently come to the fore after efforts by scholars such as Jean-Marc Moura. The divide between France and l’étranger has long been evident in French bookstores, where littérature française is shelved separately from littérature étrangère, though much of the latter was written in French by francophone African authors. Such a state of affairs riled enough writers to lead to the 2007 ‘Pour une littérature-monde’ manifesto, in which African authors long published in France, like Alain Mabanckou and Jean-Luc Raharimanana, called for the abolition of all border labels in the French literary market. Since then, prominent scholars of French and francophone literature, but also large, influential bookstores like Gibert Jeune have begun to take notice of such layering of authors’ identities.

Nicki Hitchcott and Dominic Thomas's Francophone Afropean Literatures (2014) contains not only critical articles discussing ‘Afropean’ literature by authors such as Fatou Diome, Miano, Mabanckou, Sami Tchak, Wilfried N'Sondé, Bessora, and J.R. E ssomba, but also a collection of texts written by five ‘Afropean’ authors. Of Diome, Miano, Abdourahman A. Waberi, Mabanckou, Tchak, and N'Sondé, it is noteworthy that only one, N'Sondé, was raised in France (although, perhaps tellingly, he now lives in Germany).