Dealing with the Dead

I consider myself a fairly well-read person, but hadn’t previously heard of Alain Mabanckou, despite the fact that he has been nominated for an International Booker Prize. Still, the good news is that I now have all his books to look forward to reading. This particular novel is set in Pointe-Noire in the Congo, and is really evocative, creating a sense of place through rich, sensory, beautiful descriptions of characters. It’s also really eccentric and fun and vivid, as well as deeply layered with culture and history. If I had to draw comparisons to similar fictions, the things that come to mind are Tom Robbins’s Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, and Pedro Almodóvar’s movies – but really, I don’t think I’ve read anything ever that’s quite like it.