Broken Glass (Paperback)

A dizzying combination of erudition, bawdy humour and linguistic effervescence Broken Glass is a comic romp that releases Mabanckou's sense of humour... Although its cultural and intertextual musings could fuel innumerable doctorates, the real meat of Broken Glass is its comic brio, and Mabanckou's jokes work the whole spectrum of humour Deserves the acclaim heaped upon it... self-mocking and ironic, a thought-provoking glimpse into a stricken country Broken Glass proves to be an obsessive, slyly playful raconteur... the prose runs wild to weave endless sentences, their rhythm and pace attuned to the narrator's rhetorical extravagances... With his sourly comic recollections, Broken Glass makes a fine companion This bar-room yarn-spinner tells his fellow tipplers' tales in a voice that swings between broad farce and aching tragedy. His farewell performance from a perch in "Credit Gone West" abounds in scorching wit and flights of eloquence... vitriolic comedy and pugnacious irreverence. A book of grubby erudition... full of tall tales that can entertain readers from Brazzaville to Bognor. Selected as one of the 100 best books of the 21st century