The comic tale of women's liberation in Africa. When a man kills his wife for giving him lice and the police do nothing, an activist woman launches a campaign for women to withhold sex.
Set in a fictitious African nation, this novel by the distinguished writer Sony Labou Tansi takes aim at the corruption, degeneracy, violence, and repression of political life in Africa. At the heart of The Shameful State is the story of Colonel Martillimi Lopez, the nation's president, whose eccentricity and whims epitomize the "shameful situation in which humanity has elected to live." Lopez stages a series of grotesque and barbaric events while his nation falls apart. Unable to resist the dictator's will, his desperate citizens are left with nothing but humiliation. The evocation of this deranged world is a showcase for the linguistic and stylistic inventiveness that are the hallmark of Sony Labou Tansi's work. This first English translation by Dominic Thomas includes a foreword by Congolese writer Alain Mabanckou that contextualizes the novel's importance in literary history and the significance of Sony Labou Tansi for future generations of writers.
Sony Labou Tansi's surreal portrait of a despised and incompetent regime is a biting, burlesque fable, incisive in its description of postcolonial life. History has been silenced in this modern African state: only the voices of the dead cry out for justice. It is a cry answered by Estina Bronzario, the Woman of Bronze, determined to act against the political and moral corruption of male-dominated society. Murders escalate, crowds ebb and flow, and the years roll by. But all the while, the police never come... 'Central Africa's greatest writer.' New York Times 'No greater genius than Sony Lab'ou Tansi.' Independent 'Sublimely surreal allegory... Tansi [is] one of Africa's important voices.' Publishers Weekly
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