Sony Labou Tansi – författare

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.

Listed as one of the 100 best books on Africa, Life and a Half was Sony Labou Tansi's response to the death of close friends during a bloody military and political crackdown in Congo. The novel takes place in an imaginary African country run by the latest in a series of cannibalistic dictators who has captured Martial, the leader of the opposition, and his family. Though shot, knifed, butchered, and bled, Martial's spirit lives on to guide his followers in their fight against the dictators. Facing censorship, Tansi insisted that his book was a fable and that if he were ever given the opportunity to write about real events, he would be much more direct rather than follow the torturous paths of a novel. This crisp translation by Alison Dundy maintains the fast-paced action and bitingly satiric tone of the original.

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