Serpent's Tail Website
Menu
Broken Glass
£9.99
Add to shopping basketPricing
| Type | Price Value |
|---|---|
| Online Price | £9.99 |
Book Details
- ISBN 9781852429188
- 19 February 2009
- 288 pp
- Paperback with flaps
Trade Resources
Synopsis
The history of 'Credit Gone Away', a squalid Congolese bar, is related by one of its most loyal customers, Broken Glass, who has been commissioned by its owner to set down an account of the characters who frequent it. Broken Glass himself is a disgraced alcoholic school teacher with a love of French language and literature which he has largely failed to communicate to his pupils but which he displays in the pages of his notebook. The notebook is also a farewell to the bar and to his fellow drinkers. After writing the final words Broken Glass will go down to the River Tchinouka and throw himself into its murky waters, where his lamented mother also drowned.
Reviews
Praise for African Psycho:
‘This is Taxi Driver for Africa’s blank generation... a deftly ironic Grand Guignol, a pulp fiction vision of Frantz Fanon’s “wretched of the earth” that somehow manages to be both frightening and self-mocking at the same time’ Time Out, New York
‘[An] auspicious debut from a francophone author who most certainly deserves to be discovered. It is smart, stylish and plenty "literary"’Globe and Mail
‘Mabanckou’s novel... discovers a fascinating new way to hang readers on those tenterhooks... African Psycho presents no gloomy Raskolnikov, nor the fixed sneer of Patrick Bateman, but a haunted burlesque’ The Believer
‘A macabre but comical take on a would-be serial killer’ Vanity Fair
‘Disturbing – and disturbingly funny’ New Yorker