Overview
Winner of the Prix de la Fondation de France and the Grand Prix Literaire d’Afrique Noire
This novel centers on the actions of one man, Mankunku, a “destroyer,” who is born in mysterious circumstances in a banana plantation, and whose identity is as mercurial as that of his land. Mythical, lyrical, powerful, surreal, and immensely ambitious, this novel does for Africa what One Hundred Years of Solitude did for South America.
Author Biography
Emmanuel Dongala was, until 1997, dean of Brazzaville University in the Congo Republic, a professor of chemistry, and a writer honored in France with the rank of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. Because of a violent civil war, he fled Africa and is now a professor at Bard College in upstate New York. He lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.