African Psycho
Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize 2015
“The novel with which [Mabanckou] cemented his reputation as one of French-language fiction’s leading lights . . . Black as pitch and bitter as wormwood, a razor-sharp satire in which the trials of a would-be serial killer are played for laughs.” —Times Literary Supplement
Its title recalls Bret Easton Ellis’s infamous book, American Psycho. But while Ellis’s narrator was a blank slate, the protagonist of African Psycho is a quivering mass of lies, neuroses, and relentless internal chatter.
Gregoire Nakobomayo, a petty criminal, has decided to kill his girlfriend Germaine. He’s been planning the crime for some time. But the act of murder requires a bit of psychological and logistical preparation. Luckily, he has…