FICTION REVIEW

Black Moses by Alain Mabanckou

Clive Davis cannot see the appeal of this over-praised African literary star
Alain Mabanckou’s protagonist tips into madness
Alain Mabanckou’s protagonist tips into madness
JOEL SAGET/GETTY IMAGES

“Africa’s Samuel Beckett” declares the jacket blurb. Bold words. Baffling words too. Whether or not you are a Beckett fan, you would probably agree that he could turn out sentences that were icily punctilious representations of the human condition. He wrote with a scalpel.

Reading the prose of the much-lauded Congo-born novelist Alain Mabanckou — a star of the French literary scene who was a finalist in the 2015 Man Booker international prize and, with this novel, is on this year’s long-list too — is like being confronted with an adolescent toting a paint gun.

Bam, bam, bam. Slang and obscenities hurtle through air that is heavy with the smell of bodily fluids, booze and traffic fumes. Mabanckou may be ensconced in America at UCLA