Alain Mabanckou’s Masterfully Unstructured Novel of Addiction

Alain Mabanckou’s Broken Glass was first published in France under the title Verre cassé in 2005. It immediately received massive attention. Mabanckou, a French citizen and lawyer born in Republic of the Congo, was already a known talent in Francophone literary circles, having won the Grand prix littéraire d’Afrique noire for his book Bleu-blanc-rouge and critical acclaim for African Psycho.

At the time of ’s French publication, Republic of the Congo, where the book takes place, was only six years out of violent political conflict that saw the return of a former military head of state. The Democratic Republic of the Congo endured another paroxysm of internal fighting, while Sudan’s civil war and Darfur’s crisis raged. Sierra Leone and Liberia had just turned the corner after years of brutal war. Despite a new hope for African economies due to a commodities boom, poverty was still the central