In the Belly of the Congo

"At the outset, this novel draws us into a family plot, a young woman’s search for her aunt, who disappeared decades before in the chaos of the years leading up to Congo’s independence from Belgium. Ndala paints a compelling picture of his heroines—and of the passion that lead to Tshala’s tragic end—but as he moves between the 1950s and the early 2000s, he keeps his sights and his readers’ on the long-deferred reckoning of Belgium and Congo with their colonial past. The 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, where ‘natives’ were displayed in a ‘Congolese village,’ sets the stage for a consideration of the the current outcry over racist incidents in international sport. Music fans will appreciate Ndala’s evocation of the rhythms of Congolese rumba, but what I love about this novel—as about Ndala’s previous works J’irai danser sur la tombe de Sengor (2014) and Sans capote ni kalachnikov (2017)—is how tightly he knits together the disparate threads of his tale. A translation, In the Belly of the Congo (translated by Amy B. Reid) is due out from Other Press in early 2023."