All human beings, says an African legend, have an animal double. Some are benign, others wicked. When Kibandi, a boy living in a Congolese village, reaches the age of eleven, his father takes him out into the night, and forces him to drink a vile liquid from a jar which has been hidden for years in the earth. This is his initiation.
From now on he, and his double, a porcupine, become accomplices in murder. They attack neighbours, fellow villagers, people who simply cross their path. Throughout his life Kibandi relies on his double to act out his grizzly compulsions, until one...
All human beings, says an African legend, have an animal double. Some are benign, others wicked. When Kibandi, a boy living in a Congolese village,...
This tale of wild adventure reveals the dashed hopes of Africans living between worlds. When Moki returns to his village from France wearing designer clothes and affecting all the manners of a Frenchman, Massala-Massala, who lives the life of a humble peanut farmer after giving up his studies, begins to dream of following in Moki's footsteps. Together, the two take wing for Paris, where Massala-Massala finds himself a part of an underworld of out-of-work undocumented immigrants. After a botched attempt to sell metro passes purchased with a stolen checkbook, he winds up in jail and is...
This tale of wild adventure reveals the dashed hopes of Africans living between worlds. When Moki returns to his village from France wearing design...
Michel is ten years old, living in Pointe Noire, Congo, in the 1970s. His mother sells peanuts at the market, his father works at the Victory Palace Hotel, and brings home books left behind by the white guests. Planes cross the sky overhead, and Michel and his friend Loun's dream about the countries where they'll land. While news comes over the radio of the American hostage crisis in Tehran, the death of the Shah, the scandal of the Boukassa diamonds, Michel struggles with the demands of his twelve year old girlfriend Caroline, who threatens to leave him for a bully in the football team. But...
Michel is ten years old, living in Pointe Noire, Congo, in the 1970s. His mother sells peanuts at the market, his father works at the Victory Palace H...
Alain Mabanckou left Congo in 1989, at the age of twenty-two, not to return until a quarter of a century later. When at last he returns home to Pointe-Noire, a bustling port town on Congo's south-eastern coast, he finds a country that in some ways has changed beyond recognition: the cinema where, as a child, Mabanckou gorged on glamorous American culture has become a Pentecostal temple, and his secondary school has been re-named in honour of a previously despised colonial ruler. But many things remain unchanged, not least the swirling mythology of Congolese culture which still informs...
Alain Mabanckou left Congo in 1989, at the age of twenty-two, not to return until a quarter of a century later. When at last he returns home to Pointe...
Majitel nonstop baru Úvěr odcestoval kdesi v černé Africe požádá jednoho svého štamgasta, alkoholika u konce sil, Prasklýho Skleničku, bývalého učitele, milovníka francouzštiny a knih, kterého ze školy vyhodili pro nezvladatelný alkoholizmus, aby sepsal cosi jako kroniku jeho podniku. Prasklej sklenička dnes tráví všechen čas v baru, pije a pozoruje ostatní hosty, je tedy pro tento úkol nutně tím nejpovolanějším. Hned od prvních řádků se s ním ponoříme do krutých a pitoreskních osudů jeho spolustolovníků. Převážně jsou to politováníhodné...
Majitel nonstop baru Úvěr odcestoval kdesi v černé Africe požádá jednoho svého štamgasta, alkoholika u konce sil, Prasklýho Skleničku, býv...
