Africa's best books and more...
Award-winning Congolese (Brazzaville) author Alain Mabanckou of an impressive list of novels to his name, delves with AFRICAN PSYCHO (2003) into the underbelly of a large African industrial city in disarray. His stinging critique of that society and its institutions, vaguely identifiable as his own, its post-colonial links to “the country over there” (France) and the rivalry with the other Congo (DRC), is couched in bitter, yet at the same time hilarious satire and farce.
Self delusion and self awareness are central themes in Mabanckou’s work. By patiently chronicling the tragicomedies surrounding him, Broken Glass testifies of life’s harshness when one is poor and has nothing but liquor and past dreams to escape his condition. But humour is never far with Mabanckou, and Broken Glass, with its inimitable prose can soothe the direst tragedies.
Considered by some to be Francophone Africa’s’ answer to the Chinua Achebe, the late Ivorian writer and political activist, Ahmadou Kourouma is easily one of Africa’s most celebrated authors. Born in 1927, in the Ivory Coast, Kourouma belonged to the Malinke ethnic group and was raised by an uncle. From 1950 to 1954, he served in the French army in Indochina, following which he moved to Lyon, France to study mathematics.
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