I hadn’t heard of the Congolese author In Koli Jean Bofane before seeing the Oscar-nominated documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat this spring, which featured Bofane and mentioned that he was an novelist. Two of his novels have been translated into English, the second of which, Congo, Inc.: Bismarck’s Testament, marries satire with hysterical realism in an insane and sometimes inscrutable story of life in the D.R. Congo today, with its endless corruption and continued meddling from colonial interests. It does not work, ultimately, although it’s an entertaining read anyway for its madness.
Isookanga is a young Pygmy living in a village where his uncle is the chief and life is reasonably prosperous by local standards, spending much of his time playing a 4X video game called “Raging Trade” which, frankly, sounds pretty badass. He’s learned that the path to riches in the game is through violence and intimidation, though, rather than innovation, research, or hard work, and apparently you can buy all sorts of weaponry and target your opponents with incredible precision. This encourages him to set off for the nation’s capital, Kinshasa, to make his fortune, rather than to live a comfortable if boring life in the hinterlands. His narrative brings him into contact with corrupt politicians, do-gooder diplomats, even more corrupt UN peacekeepers, a Chinese merchant who has been abandoned by a corrupt partner, and so much more that it’s often unclear how any of these even connects back to Isookanga, who just wants to make money – like everyone else.
Bofane’s worldbuilding here is by far the best part of the book. He sends up modern Congo with a series of characters who are all drawn ten percent more sharply than is realistic, just enough of an edge to keep it satirical rather than ridiculous; the video game is the only part of Congo, Inc. that seems to defy realism, and that’s an easy thing to forgive. No one is above the corruption, although different people seem to want different things – the researcher who comes to study Congolese people is after something different than the UN envoy in New York who is after something different than the crooked clan leader and so on. There’s a sort of symmetry in the resolution here, and Bofane does manage to tie up most of the loose ends in a satisfying and often comical way, although the whole is less than the sum of the novel’s parts because of how quickly some of those subplots reach their denouements.
Saying too much more would spoil the pleasures of the book, which lie in much of its absurdity; if you can keep the characters and settings straight, there are some genuinely funny scenes within Congo, Inc. that also act in service of the greater commentary. I knew going into the book that Bofane, who lives in exile in Brussels, has a low view of Belgium (whose king “owned” the Congo as a personal territory and committed genocide against its people), the United States (which conspired to assassinate Congo’s President Patrice Lumumba), and the D.R.C.’s current leaders, so I understood the slant of his satire and could grasp the anger seething beneath its text. I’m not sure I would have gotten it to the same degree without that subtext. I’d be curious to read another of his works, preferably one of his two subsequent novels, once they’re translated into English.
Next up: I finished Mice 1961 and am almost through Jim Thompson’s noir novel The Getaway.
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