Pandora in the Congo

Hardcover, 441 pages

English language

Published by Canongate Books.

ISBN:
9781841958156
5 stars (1 review)

It is 1914 when Marcus Garvey, a bedraggled British manservant, emerges from the depths of the Belgian Congo. He is the sole survivor of an ill-fated mining expedition in which both his masters, William and Richard Craver, died and from which their African porters fled. Garvey returns to London carrying two diamonds of extraordinary size, spinning a story too unspeakably terrifying to be believed. He is promptly arrested.

Tommy Thompson, a London ghostwriter for a ghostwriter for a ghostwriter (don't ask!), is approached by his attorney to document Garvey's unholy African odyssey. From his prison cell awaiting the murder trial, Garvey recounts the mind-boggling horror that the Craver mining expedition encountered in the dark recesses of the Congo.

Exactly how did the Craver brothers die? What unearthly forces would drive men to commit such acts of immeasurable brutality? Could love have possibly bloomed in the heart of such darkness? Only …

3 editions

Sorprenent

5 stars

(EN below) Es tracta d'un llibre que va evolucionant contínuament on res no és el que sembla. El que al començament em semblava que només es tractava una història ben explicada però que s'assemblava massa a la seva anterior novel·la (La Pell Freda) i exigia fer massa actes de fe en virtut de l'entreteniment, va mutant en un seguit d'històries dins històries, amb un final sorprenent i intel·ligent on tot el que no tenia sentit pren una nova i inesperada dimensió.

This is a constantly evolving book where nothing is what it seems. What at first seemed to me to be just a well-told story but too similar to his previous novel (La Pell Freda) and requiring too many acts of faith for the sake of entertainment, turns into a followed by stories within stories, with a surprising and clever ending where everything that didn't make sense takes on a …