<P>Set in a fictitious African nation, this novel by the distinguished writer Sony Labou Tansi takes aim at the corruption, degeneracy, violence, and repression of political life in Africa. At the heart of The Shameful State is the story of Colonel Martillimi Lopez, the nation’s president, whose eccentricity and whims epitomize the "shameful situation in which humanity has elected to live." Lopez stages ...
<P>Under the pseudonym Eza Boto, Mongo Beti wrote Ville cruelle (Cruel City) in 1954 before he came to the world's attention with the publication of Le pauvre Christ de Bomba (The Poor Christ of Bomba). Cruel City tells the story of a young man's attempt to cope with capitalism and the rapid urbanization of his country. Banda, the protagonist, sets off to sell the year's cocoa harvest to earn the bride price for the ...
<P>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 ...
<P>In 1963, when Lois Kulwicki's father loses his job at Studebaker along with hundreds of other workers, he acts as if he has just been promoted. He buys a new car (the only non-Studebaker he's ever purchased) and takes his family on vacation. On the way home, Mom dumps Dad at a Stuckey's, and that's the last they see of him.</P><P>Thirty years later, Lois has a family of her own, as ...
We know how Simone met the man who will become, for a time, her fourth husband. We know what she does (artist), her age (older than she looks), her friends (a veritable menagerie), her habits (frustrated homebody). What remains to learn are the things she still doesn't fully understand herself, like her role in the affair of the Port Merveille diamond, also known as the Supreme Orchestra.<br> <br> <i>The Supreme Orchestra& ...
A kind of cross between The Haunting of Hill House, Stoner and Alice in Wonderland.Mayr's novel The Widows was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book in the Canada-Caribbean region. Monoceros won the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize, the 2012 Relit Award for Best Novel, and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. ...
"Holohan's ability to write the kind of free-flowing naturalistic dialogue that so potently conveys the anarchic spirit of schoolboy warfare . . . is grounded by a shadow play of macabre references to horrors that ghost around the edges of the narrative, many eerily similar to some of the more infamous real life reports that have emerged in recent years."–The Irish TimesCombining the spirit of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim with a bawd ...
Yes, we have achieved much. Have we destroyed even more? In the name of Rome, Scipio Africanus systematically destroyed the hard-won empires of Hannibal and Alexander the Great. With breathtaking battle scenes and a tale of violent passions, Scipio is a stunning sequel to Hannibal, Ross Leckie's acclaimed bestselling historical novel. This inspired narrative reveals the aristocrat, general, politician, and aesthete behind the Roman ...
