Reviewed April 2021
“Let’s say the boss of the bar Credit Gone West gave me this notebook to fill, he’s convinced that I Broken Glass can turn out a book”
In the Republic of the Congo, in the town of Trois-Cents, in a bar called Credit Gone West, a former school teacher known as broken glass drinks red wine and records the stories of the bar and its regulars, including Stubborn Snail, the owner, who must battle church people, ex-alcoholics, tribal leaders, and thugs set on destroying him and his business; the Printer, who has his respectable life in France ruined by a white woman, his wife;Robinette, who could out drink and out piss any man until a skinny-legged stranger challenged her reign; and Broken Glass himself, whose own tale involves as much heartache, squalor, disappointment and delusion.
An irreverent allusive, scatalogical, tragicomic masterpiece from one of the greatest living Francophone wiriters.
“”… so you should just let yourself go, you’re never too old to write … Broken Glass, I want your inner anger out from inside you, go on explode, vomit, spit, cough, or ejaculate, I don’t care how you do it, just turn out something about this bar for me, about some of the Guys who hand out here, and especially about yourself…”
(Translated by Helen Stevenson)
Broken Glass:Alain Mabanckou (c160 pages) (2010) (Paperback) (Kindle) NOTE listed as out of print on some sites but still available on Amazon.
Available in paperback, hardback or digitally for devices such as a Kindle or the Kindle App on the Apple App Store or Google Play.
Pig By The Coast 