The Catastrophist
A Novel
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The Catastrophist is a brilliant, highly acclaimed novel of love, passion, violence, and desire, set in the Belgian Congo in 1959. While expatriates loll about their pools in a colonial paradise soon to erupt into chaos, huge crowds are drawn to the charismatic Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba -- and his even more dangerous rivals.
One man sees the cracks appearing around him and struggles to hold on to his lover, his sanity, and ultimately, his life. Gillespie, the outsider, a journalist, is in Léopoldville for the beautiful Italian, Inés. He is desperate for her love, while she is obsessed with the unfolding drama, caught up in history, ideology, hero worship.
In a world slipping out of control, gripped by disgust, fear, and incomprehension, Gillespie feels that events threaten to overwhelm him -- as does his friendship with the amiable but sinister American, Stipe; his relationship with his canny native driver, Auguste; and, above all, his love for Inès.
It is Inès who defines Gillespie as a catastrofista, an Italian word for somebody for whom "no problem is small. Nothing can be fixed; it is always the end," for Gillespie is deeply pessimistic and skeptical about their relationship as well as politics, while Inès believes in engagement and commitment, whatever the risks -- which, as it turns out, are greater than either of them can foresee.
As colonial corruption and injustice give way to turmoil, brutality, and murder, Gillespie is finally forced to confront what is happening before his eyes. In subtle, haunting prose, Ronan Bennett captures the complex connection between the personal and the political, between cruelty and lust, between eroticism and love, between courage and fear, between detachment and involvement.
The Catastrophist is a bold, courageous novel, at once a searing love story and a terrifying political thriller, in the tradition of such books as Graham Greene's The Comedians or such postcolonial classics as The Year of Living Dangerously -- an erotic Heart of Darkness for the twentieth century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An Irish novelist finds himself trapped in an African colony's struggle for independence in this sophisticated and resonant political novel from the Whitbread Prize-shortlisted, Belfast-bred Bennett. In 1959, middle-aged writer James Gillespie travels to the Belgian Congo to join his young Italian girlfriend, In s Sabiani, an idealistic journalist covering Patrice Lumumba's revolution for a Communist daily. In a colony swiftly on its way to nationhood, every action seems political. But narrator James clings to his ideal of artistic detachment, which drives a wedge between him and the engag In s. While James makes friends with U.S. attach Mark Stipe, a stocky swaggerer who may be working for the CIA, In s takes an African boyfriend, Auguste, Stipe's former houseboy and now Lumumba's right-hand man. Amid the tumult and intrigue of decolonization, James is forced to choose: will he cling to his ideology as a neutral observer, or help In s and Auguste when they need him? Bennett's laconic style suits his cautious narrator precisely, recording his reluctant engagement with the Africans' cause. With deft strokes, Bennett shows how U.S. and Belgian interests, fearing Lumumba's Communist sympathies, quickly undermined his government, helping to power his rival Mobutu, who proved a bloodthirsty tyrant. This U.S. debut is Bennett's fourth book in Britain, where he's often (and rightly) compared to Graham Greene, praised both for his awareness of Third World politics and for his tactile sex scenes. Readers expecting a straight-up thriller may flip impatiently past flashbacks to Northern Ireland, meditative passages and references to Empson and Flaubert. But those seeking a well-made hybrid in Greene's mode--built of irony and commitment, political theory and garish violence, erotic charge and historical fact--will find Bennett a writer who can shock, please, inspire, disturb and finally satisfy. FYI: Before he was 20, Bennett was arrested as an IRA activist (though he was not a member) and convicted of murder and armed robbery, but released when his conviction was overturned. Later, living in England, he was arrested on a charge of conspiracy and served time while awaiting trial, where he was acquitted. Upon his release, he studied history at King's College, where he received a Ph.D. He is now a journalist in London.
