The latest addition to my website is Tchicaya U Tam’si‘s Les Phalènes [The Moths]. This is the third in his trilogy and we follow the same family we met in Les Cancrelats [The Cockroaches]but World War II has finished and things are changing, symbolised by the young women dancing in their Charleston dresses. Prosper is … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Tchicaya U Tam’si‘s Les Méduses (The Madman and the Medusa). The novel is set in Tchicaya U Tam’si’s home town of Pointe-Noire, Republic of the Congo in June 1944. At the beginning of the novel, in the same week but not on the same day, two men die … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Tchicaya U Tam’s‘s Les Cancrelats [The Cockroaches]. The novel is set from 1902 to 1945 and primarily tells the story of two siblings – Sophie and Prosper, born in Côte d’Ivoire to an Ivorian mother, who dies soon after Prosper’s birth, and Congolese father. He takes them back … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alain Mabanckou‘s Verre Cassé (Broken Glass), another colourful and lively novel from the Congolese author. In this novel, the narrator is called Broken Glass – we never know his real name – and he seems to spend most of his time in a bar called, simply, Credit. The … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alain Mabanckou‘s Lumières de Pointe-Noire (The Lights of Pointe-Noire). This is a fictionalised autobiography following from his earlier Demain j’aurai vingt ans (Tomorrow I’ll be Twenty). It tells primarily of his return to the Congo twenty-six years after he left, his mourning for his mother, Pauline and, to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alain Mabanckou‘s Les Petits-fils nègres de Vercingétorix [The Negro Grandsons of Vercingetorix]. I found this novel somewhat disappointing, as it is a bit disjointed and seems to be telling one story but never manages to get on with it. It is about the civil war and its effect … Read more