Alain Mabanckou - Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty

This country of domestic tyrants is also one of political tyrants, ministers, presidents, immortals, who for Michel are only slightly exaggerated versions of members of his own family. Everyday life, with its betrayals and vendettas, is the favourite arena of the comic writer. Mabanckou brilliantly conveys the tenor of this world, with all its derision and absurdity: the strength — physical and moral — of the women, the pain of a child betrayed by his mother, his longing for his two sisters who never lived, Sister Star and Sister No-name, his feelings for Caroline, the playmate who becomes his first love. In the hurly-burly of life on the street, every moment, every word spoken, has far-reaching consequences, even while nothing is truly serious — take, for example, the indignation of Uncle René, who removes a portrait of Victor Hugo from the living room on discovering that the illustrious writer once declared roundly: ‘Oh what a land is Africa! Asia has its history, America has its history, even Australia has its history; Africa has no history.’

The story of Michel, the young hero of Mabanckou’s novel, has nothing very unusual about it — just the discovery of life, the upsets and emotions, the tricks and traps which prepare a child to take its place in the adult word. His discoveries are not specifically Congolese, nor even African, though perhaps the hybrid nature of the society he lives in opens his eyes sooner rather than later. He discovers what adults are really like — often selfish and immature, unfailingly pathetic. Like children the world over — remember the fierce look of the small girl watching her parents rip each other apart in a novel by Colette — young Michel must find a place for himself, amid meanness, laughter and despair. Only youth can wipe away the hurt of the past and ward off future danger.

The odds seem very likely that Michel will take his place in the annals of the novel, alongside Holden Caulfield, of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye , and the unforgettable Miles Miles in Miss Take by Réjean Ducharme.