Congo Inc.
Bismarck's Testament
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
To the sound of machine gun fire and the smell of burning flesh, award-winning author In Koli Jean Bofane leads readers on a perilous, satirical journey through the civil conflict and political instability that have been the logical outcome of generations of rapacious multinational corporate activity, corrupt governance, widespread civil conflict, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation in Africa. Isookanga, a Congolese Pygmy, grows up in a small village with big dreams of becoming rich. His vision of the world is shaped by his exploits in Raging Trade, an online game where he seizes control of the world's natural resources by any means possible: high-tech weaponry, slavery, and even genocide. Isookanga leaves his sleepy village to make his fortune in the pulsating capital Kinshasa, where he joins forces with street children, warlords, and a Chinese victim of globalization in this blistering novel about capitalism, colonialism, and the world haunted by the ghosts of Bismarck and Leopold II. Told with just enough levity to make it truly heartbreaking, Congo Inc. is a searing tale about ecological, political, and economic failure.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bofane's kaleidoscopic novel of contemporary Congo never quite settles; it ricochets between the members of its varied cast and their respective victimizations. Isookanga, the heir of a pygmy chief, yearns for more modernity than his small village can provide. Relocating to Kinshasa, he meets a wide range of people trying to cope in the wake of Congo's lurching recovery from colonialism. Isookanga flits between ambitious machinations: a water-selling business with a Chinese patsy abandoned in the Congo, a riot with a street gang of children, and a plot to help the overseer of a national park exploit its mineral wealth. Bofane's tendency to provide the backstory of each character and others associated with them presents a confusing, diffuse structure. Stories of boy soldiers, sexual violence, unscrupulous developers, and failed government never fully coalesce. The satirical jabs at, for example, the pyramid scheme masquerading as the Church of Divine Multiplication or the UN functionary who frequents a child prostitute offer some black humor. The difficult style and painful depictions will put off some readers, but this scalding indictment of Western interference in Africa should give proponents of pell-mell progress pause.
