The small African state of Burkina Faso is the next stop on my World Of Literature Project with the aid of The Parachute Drop by Norbert Zongo. Few books I’ve read have opened in a more chilling way than this slim novel which was published after Zongo’s assassination in 1998. In his preface Zongo, the […]
Some novels can make you laugh; some can make you cry. Just occasionally they can make you angry. There was little to laugh at in Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. This is a book designed to evoke quite a different set of reactions, a book it would be difficult to read and not feel […]
Take a seedy bar in a dilapidated part suburb of an African city; mix in a few odd ball characters and the stage is set for Alain Mabanckou’s effervescent narrative Broken Glass. The eponymous narrator is a disgraced school teacher. He spends his days soaking up large quantities of red wine at the Credit Gone West bar. […]