African Psycho

(Paperback, Main - Classic edition)

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Description

Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize 2015

Gregoire Nakobomayo, a petty criminal, has decided to kill his girlfriend Germaine. He's planned the crime for some time, but still, the act of murder requires a bit of psychological and logistical preparation. Luckily, he has a mentor to call on, the far more accomplished serial killer Angoualima. The fact that Angoualima is dead doesn't prevent Gregoire from holding lengthy conversations with him. Little by little, Gregoire interweaves Angoualima's life and criminal exploits with his own.

Continuing with the plan despite a string of botched attempts, Gregoire's final shot at offing Germaine leads to an abrupt unravelling. Lauded in France for its fresh and witty style, African Psycho's inventive use of language surprises and relieves the reader by sending up this disturbing subject.

Reviews

Taxi Driver for Africa's blank generation... 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 *
A smart satire on the deserving targets of corrupt officialdom, complacent media and blank-eyed consumerism * New Internationalist *
Disturbing - and disturbingly funny ... although the title invokes American Psycho, the book owes more to Dostoyevsky and Camus * New Yorker *

Author Bio

Alain Mabanckou was born in 1966 in the Congo. He currently lives in California, where he teaches French literature at UCLA. One of Africa's major writers, he is the author of six volumes of poetry and six novels. He received the prestigious Prix Renaudot for Memoirs of a Porcupine. He was selected by the French journal Lire as one of the fifty writers to watch out for this century. He was awarded the Grand Prix de la Litterature in 2012 and in 2015 was listed as a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize.