Congo Inc.
Le testament de Bismarck
-
- £8.49
-
- £8.49
Publisher Description
Le jeune Isookanga quitte sa forêt et son village pygmée pour faire du business à Kinshasa. Sur son chemin, de nombreux personnages – des plus pauvres aux plus puissants, des plus vils aux plus naïfs – composent un saisissant tableau du Congo contemporain aux prises avec la mondialisation. Après Mathématiques congolaises (prix Jean Muno, grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire, prix littéraire de la SCAM, près de 20 000 exemplaires vendus), In Koli Jean Bofane n’a rien perdu de son énergie, de son humour ni de sa lucidité politique.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bofane's kaleidoscopic novel of contemporary Congo never quite settles; it ricochets between the members of its varied cast and their respective victimizations. Isookanga, the heir of a pygmy chief, yearns for more modernity than his small village can provide. Relocating to Kinshasa, he meets a wide range of people trying to cope in the wake of Congo's lurching recovery from colonialism. Isookanga flits between ambitious machinations: a water-selling business with a Chinese patsy abandoned in the Congo, a riot with a street gang of children, and a plot to help the overseer of a national park exploit its mineral wealth. Bofane's tendency to provide the backstory of each character and others associated with them presents a confusing, diffuse structure. Stories of boy soldiers, sexual violence, unscrupulous developers, and failed government never fully coalesce. The satirical jabs at, for example, the pyramid scheme masquerading as the Church of Divine Multiplication or the UN functionary who frequents a child prostitute offer some black humor. The difficult style and painful depictions will put off some readers, but this scalding indictment of Western interference in Africa should give proponents of pell-mell progress pause.
