Bofane’s short novel is a knowing, ironic take on life in the DRC. At one point he writes: The women dancing showed her what to do, rubbing their rumps and pubic areas against the hard male organs, ostensibly unimpressed; you would have thought it was an Alain Mabanckou novel, and it isn’t clear if Bpfane is being ironic or not. His approach is scattergun and all-embracing. There is a central character, Isookanga, a pygmy who comes to Kinshasa from the deep jungle. He is a kind of Candide, an innocent abroad who gets mixed up in all kinds of trouble, but the novel also includes as characters a warlord and his wife, a lost Chinese immigrants, a Latvian UN peacekeeper and an exploitative preacher, among others. These characters flit through the book, some interacting with Isookanga, others not, all of them contributing to the construction of an overarching vision of a chaotic, vigorous society, at once on the edge of the modern world and at the same time at the heart of it.
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