or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
19 used & new from £4.18
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Broken Glass
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book

Broken Glass (Paperback)

by Alain Mabanckou (Author), Helen Stevenson (Translator)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £9.99
Price: £5.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £4.00 (40%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Want guaranteed delivery by Thursday, November 12? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
16 new from £4.18 3 used from £4.19
Other Editions: RRP: Our Price: Other Offers:
Paperback £7.99 £7.19

Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with African Psycho by Alain Mabanckou

Broken Glass + African Psycho
Price For Both: £11.69

Show availability and shipping details

  • This item: Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou

    In stock.
    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

  • African Psycho by Alain Mabanckou

    In stock.
    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

African Psycho

African Psycho

by Alain Mabanckou
£5.70
Havana Fever

Havana Fever

by Leonardo Padura
5.0 out of 5 stars (1)  £6.48
Shadow: Sometimes the past is better left buried

Shadow: Sometimes the past is better left buried

by Karin Alvtegen
4.6 out of 5 stars (5)  £8.54
The Thing Around Your Neck

The Thing Around Your Neck

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
4.3 out of 5 stars (52)  £4.58
The Mao Case

The Mao Case

by Qiu Xiaolong
4.2 out of 5 stars (4)  £5.97
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 176 pages
  • Publisher: Serpent's Tail; UK First Edition; 1st printing. edition (19 Feb 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1852429186
  • ISBN-13: 978-1852429188
  • Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.4 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 302,397 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #2 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > S > Stevenson, Helen

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Review

"'This is Taxi Driver for Africa's blank generation... a deftly ironic Grand Guignol, a pulp fiction vision of Frantz Fanon's "wretched of the earth" that somehow manages to be both frightening and self-mocking at the same time' Time Out, New York '[An] auspicious debut from a francophone author who most certainly deserves to be discovered. It is smart, stylish and plenty "literary'" Globe and Mall 'Mabanckou's novel... discovers a fascinating new way to hang readers on those tenterhooks... African Psycho presents no gloomy Raskolnikov, nor the fixed sneer of Patrick Bateman, but a haunted burlesque' The Believer 'A macabre but comical take on a would-be serial killer' Vanity Fair 'Disturbing - and disturbingly funny' New Yorker"


Product Description

The history of 'Credit Gone Away', a squalid Congolese bar, is related by one of its most loyal customers, Broken Glass, who has been commissioned by its owner to set down an account of the characters who frequent it. Broken Glass himself is a disgraced alcoholic school teacher with a love of French language and literature which he has largely failed to communicate to his pupils but which he displays in the pages of his notebook. The notebook is also a farewell to the bar and to his fellow drinkers. After writing the final words, Broken Glass will go down to the River Tchinouka and throw himself into its murky waters, where his lamented mother also drowned.
See all Product Description
Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(2)
(2)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Broken Glass
93% buy the item featured on this page:
Broken Glass 4.5 out of 5 stars (2)
£5.99
African Psycho
7% buy
African Psycho
£5.70
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A hilarious but literary romp around a bar you'd never want to visit, 4 Mar 2009
By A Common Reader "Committed to reading" (Sussex, England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)      
Alain Mabanckou, born in the Republic of the Congo and is now a Professor in the French Department of the University of California. He has written six novels and if Broken Glass is anything to go by, his reputation as a writer to watch in the 21st century is well-deserved.

Broken Glass, both the title of the book and its narrator (apparently a Congolese term for scrawny poultry) is set in the Credit Gone West bar. Broken Glass spends far too much time in the bar and is intimately acquainted with many of its regular customers. The owner of the bar, The Stubborn Snail, gives Broken Glass a notebook and tells him to write the tragi-comic life stories of some of the customers, such as The Printer and The Pampers Man.

We soon discover that Broken Glass has a unique writing style well-suited to describing the embarrassingly painful (but hilarious) experiences of these disreputable characters. Each one seems to have brought on themselves various types of disasters and Broken Glass does not spare their feelings in recounting their excruciatingly awful experiences.

The humour is black, but is also sprinkled with many references to French literature, for Broken Glass was a teacher before he took to drink, and his knowledge of Chateaubriand and Marivaux infects his writing throughout the book. Mabanckou teases his readers with a wide range of quotations and references which are slipped into the text almost without us noticing. Even Holden Caulfield makes an appearance and Broken Glass has a rather oblique conversation with him hinting at the pages of Catcher in the Rye.

This is a clever book, very amusing, satirical, mocking and definitely unique. I usually turn away from African books, the bleakness being almost too much to bear, but in Alain Mabanckou we have a writer who is above all funny, and while this book will entertain for a few hours, the man Broken Glass will remain in the memory as one of literatures unique personalities.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars If everywhere in the Congo is like this then I'm definitely visiting, 21 April 2009
By Robert Burdock "RobAroundBooks.com" (Fife, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
In a Nutshell - If one is not too easily offended by explicit material, and one can get past Mabanckou's rebellious flouting of the rules of proper grammar, then what one can look forward to in Broken Glass, is a novel which offers a quite remarkable and wholly memorable reading experience.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject







i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Ad

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.