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Article: Broken Glass.(Books)(Brief article)(Book review)
- Article from:
- New Internationalist
- Article date:
- June 1, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 New Internationalist Magazine. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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by Alain Mabanckou translated from the French by Helen Stevenson (Serpent's Tail, ISBN 9781852429188) I described Congolese author Alain Mabanckou's previous novel African Psycho as a scathing attack on the greed and material values of Africa's elite. His follow-up is a gentler, but no less astute, affair, set in the lower depths of Congolese society. The owner of the drinking den Credit Gone West asks one of his regulars, who goes by the name of Broken Glass, to write a book about the bar and its customers.
Superficially, the novel is a simple catalogue of the life-histories of the drifters, misfits and losers who make up the clientele of this ramshackle ...