Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals

“This is a humourous, irreverent and unabashedly political novel; it is an enraged lament about postcolonial Africa and how the leaders who inherited supposedly independent countries went on to fail their citizens. Some leaders are closely modelled on real characters – Mobutu of Zaire and Lumumba of the Congo are impossible to miss. The simplified summary of Kourouma: Colonialism has spawned monsters in the name of African leaders, and the West is the creator of these Frankensteins. The narrative is complex. There is a wonderfully oral quality to the telling, and many stories and anecdotes are laughaloud funny. Kourouma insists – and this underlies the narrative – that African dictators are mostly guided by their belief in the traditional, the supernatural, and that Islam or Christianity are mere windowdressing. This is a good example of an intelligent and important book that’s also genuinely interesting.”