Review: "The Lights of Pointe-Noire" by Alain Mabanckou

Black Moses was one of my favorite books last year, so when I shuffled up my reading lost last minute a few weeks ago, I knew Alain Mabanckou’s non-fiction breakthrough The Lights of Pointe-Noire was an easy choice for me to pick. While I don’t like it nearly as much as I like his novel, it has the same passion, insight and intrigue of his fictional novel. It might not be a fair comparison because while the books have similar themes and share an identical locale, they are quite different in tone. While the book performs a seamless balancing act between slapstick and quiet tragedy, this is a more somber piece that acts as both an exorcism of a displaced writer’s conflicting past as well as a kind of triptych for a city that has one foot in the past and another in the present, with no plans for either to move forward or backward. It begins with Mabanckou receiving news of his mother’s passing, news he processes in such a detached way he does not tell his friends about it. This news forces him to travel back to Pointe-Noire, Congo after having been gone for more than two decades. What follows is a mish-mash of Mabanckou's past and present, which shows the duality at the heart of the city, where children are still taught to fear mythical beings while being enamored with spaghetti westerns and martial arts film at the local multiplex. What fascinated me most were the sections focusing on Mabanckou extended family, especially the men he calls his “uncles” all of which are fascinating people who somehow never were able to escape the city like Mabanckou was able to and find international success, an idea brilliantly put forth near the end. Sometimes it is rather dry read, but it was nice to read a book about someone’s home town that’s not hopelessly cynical, and I’m grateful it came from an a writer with the immense talent of Mabanckou. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Black Moses" by Alain Mabanckou

Most years my reading list revolves around certain obsessions I have, or things that pique my interest. For the past few years, that interest has been new books, book released during the given year. This year, I have modified that a bit to focus more on international writers with translation released during the given year. It has been a great strategy so far, because it brings in contact with some very interesting and phenomenal writers, such as the Congolese writer Alain Mabanckou, whose novel Black Moses was released this year and I just finished tonight. Simply put, it’s a stunning achievement, the kind of book that is easy to get lost in, to follow along with and have your heart broken by. With flighty but not weighty prose, a strong sense of character and a weird slight of hand that Mabanckou pulls more than once during the book’s slim 199 pages, this story of a young boy’s journey through a corrupt and lonely landscape becomes almost biblical in nature, much like the name of the young boy himself. It is a brutal story and one of the saddest I’ve come across this year, but it has an undeniable energy that flows through the pages that acts as a sort of shock to the reader’s system. The eponymous character (whose name is A LOT longer than “Black Moses”, which I won’t spell out here) lives Loango, an orphanage in Point Noire, the second largest city in the Republic of Congo. He was left there a week after he was born and he was given his name by Papa Moupelo, the orphanage’s priest. The book charts his coming of age and the turmoil of his country (with little moments of melancholia denoting certain political aspects), as he eventually escapes and moves about the city’s underworld, suffering sad loss after sad loss, which leads to the change of pace near the end that culminates in an act of violence and an ending that is depressingly appropriate. Reading through this book, I couldn’t help but think of Black Moses as a distant cousin to characters like Francie Brady in The Butcher Boy and Balram Halwai of The White Tiger, each one a young boy out of time who come of age in harsh environments that never quite understand them, who navigate the cruel world around them as best as they can with varying degrees of success. Along with a great narrative drive, the character’s Mabanckou creates are magnificent, ranging from the brutal bureaucratic director of the orphanage Dieudonne Ngoulmoumako, the pair of twins Moses escapes with, Old Koukouba, the caretaker of the orphanage with a grim backstory and finally Bonaventure, Moses truest friend at the orphanage, whose lineage is wrapped up with the country’s changing political landscape and whose spirit haunts the book up to its final few pages. This is a great literary work of history and humanity; exciting, funny and grim all at the same time, from an international writer I can’t wait to dive into again.

Rating: 5/5