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About Broken Glass
Product Description Alain Mabanckou’s riotous new novel centers on the patrons of a run-down bar in the Congo. In a country that appears to have forgotten the importance of remembering, a former schoolteacher and bar regular nicknamed Broken Glass has been elected to record their stories for posterity. But Broken Glass fails spectacularly at staying out of trouble as one denizen after another wants to rewrite history in an attempt at making sure his portrayal will properly reflect their exciting and dynamic lives. Despondent over this apparent triumph of self-delusion over self-awareness, Broken Glass drowns his sorrows in red wine and riffs on the great books of Africa and the West. Brimming with life, death, and literary allusions, Broken Glass is Mabanckou’s finest novel a mocking satire of the dangers of artistic integrity. From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Set in a sad-sack Congolese bar called Credit Gone West, this ingeniously satirical novel by Congolese poet and novelist Mabanckou ( African Psycho) creates a microcosm of postcolonial African experience through the tales of sodden bar patrons. Broken Glass, a 64-year-old former teacher who renounced a conventional life for the drinking life, jots down his and others' stories in a notebook given to him by the bar's owner, Stubborn Snail, because the days when grandmothers reminisced from their deathbeds was gone now. Broken Glass endures ribald tales by unsavory regulars such as Pampers, a frequenter of the sex district who lands in jail, only to be sexually abused by the inmates. Another fixture, Printer, recounts the convoluted tale of his travels in France, where he married a gorgeous white woman, moved to a Paris suburb well away from negroes, and then discovered his wife was sleeping with his visiting son. Mabanckou moves fluidly from story to story, stringing sentences together without periods and settling into a pleasing prose rhythm. Literary allusions (Holden Caulfield has a cameo) and gentle ironies punctuate this wickedly entertaining novel. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist A man known as Broken Glass is a regular in Credit Gone West, a run-down bar in the Congo; the bar's owner, aka the Stubborn Snail, selects him to record the stories of the bar's other sodden, down-and-out habitués. That slight premise is all Mabanckou needs to spin a raucous tale of the regulars, the bar, corrupt and inept government, and life in Trois-Cents, an impoverished district of an unnamed city. The regulars' stories, and Broken Glass' own story, are all self-serving explanations of their failed lives, by turns tragic, funny, and sometimes spectacularly vulgar. Mabanckou's prose suggests the drunken ramblings of men who think they're virtuous and unique, perhaps even fantastic. Literary allusions lace these ramblings. But it is the author's sense of humor—and he can find humor in even the most tragic or vulgar circumstances—that makes Broken Glass a memorable and successful novel. --Thomas Gaughan Review Awards Prix de la Société des poètes français, 1995 Grand prix littéraire d’Afrique noire, for his first novel, Bleu-Blanc-Rouge, 1999 Prix du roman Ouest-France-Etonnants Voyageurs 2005, for Broken Glass Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie 2005, for Broken Glass Prix RFO du livre 2005, for Broken Glass Prix Renaudot 2006, for Memoirs of a Porcupine Prix de La Rentrée littéraire 2006, for Memoirs of a Porcupine Prix Aliénor d’Aquitaine 2006, for Memoirs of a Porcupine Prix Créateurs Sans Frontières 2007 (Ministère français des Affaires Etrangères), for Memoirs of a Porcupine Médaille de citoyen d’honneur de la ville de Saint-Jean-d’Angély (Charente-Maritime, France), 2004 Praise for Broken Glass Whatever else might be in short supply in the Congo depicted by Alain Mabanckou, imagination and wit aren’t . . . a comic romp . . . Broken Glass is a whistlestop tour of Fren
