In a literary reversal as deadly serious as it is wickedly satiric, this novel by the acclaimed French-speaking African writer Abdourahman A. Waberi turns the fortunes of the world upside down. On this reimagined globe a stream of sorry humanity flows from the West, from the slums of America and the squalor of Europe, to escape poverty and desperation in the prosperous United States of Africa. It is in this world that an African doctor on a humanitarian mission to France adopts a child. Now a young artist, this girl, Malaïka, travels to the troubled land of her birth in hope of finding her mother--and perhaps something of her lost self. Her search, at times funny and strange, is also deeply poignant, reminding us at every moment of the turns of fate we call truth.
Publishers Weekly,Djibouti-born Waberi's brief and concentrated tale-part satire, part fable, part fever-dream-imagines the world turned upside down: a war rages between Quebec and the American Midwest, and all of "Euramerica" is a dark, barbaric hellhole. In the United States of Africa, however-land of Africola and Sarr Mbock coffeehouses-peace and prosperity reign, even if tinged with xenophobia ("White Trash, Back Home!" a headline blares). And it's there that a dreamy, restless young artist named Maya ponders her history. Adopted as a child by a doctor on a humanitarian mission in Paris, Maya longs to find her birth mother, even as her beloved adoptive one lies dying. She travels to France, "a country moldering at the roots, smelling of urine and need," to find out, and though there's no bliss-filled reunion, Waberi manages to convince of the power of art and love to heal very real rifts. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
