Word: matapariã
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...life in Matapari??s small Congolese village is not all traditional African magicians and self-important Catholic missionaries, characters that have become almost standard in African post-colonial fiction since Chinua Achebe’s classic Things Fall Apart. Set in the 1980s and 1990s amid political turbulence in the Congo Republic, Matapari??s childhood is one where government upheavals are played out on television, where Coca-Cola infiltrates local grocery markets and where Dragonball Z and Terminator movies have as much clout as provincial folklore. As in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight?...
...Boys Come from the Stars (translated from the French Les Petits Garcons Naissent Aussi des Etoiles), his first book out of exile, reads as a political satire. Through the eyes of 15-year-old Matapari, we get a naïve, Candide-like account of Congolese politics, especially from Matapari??s impressions of his Uncle Boula Boula, the lapdog extraordinaire of the regime-of-the-moment. During a visit from the “President” (actually a Communist dictator) and his officials, Matapari remarks, “What struck me most during the visit of these...
However, much of the novel slips into narrative that resembles a young teenager’s voice a little too closely. Each of the chapters reads as an isolated episode, and together they are a jumble of modestly-interesting anecdotes, with little attempt at a flowing plot. Matapari??s voice can go from the ingenuously naïve to the foolishly simplistic, occasionally succumbing to predictable sermons on the merits of democracy and education. Uncle Boula Boula eventually finds himself on the wrong side of the political carousel and is imprisoned after a mock court case. After leading...
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