Borges noted that every writer always tells the same story. This is clear to every reader The Bazaar of the Dead And Chili pepper come from the same pen – that of Alain Mabanckou (Congo, 1966) – and represent the same complexity for Western readers. Both are set in Pointe Noir in the Congo and use literary devices such as the compilation of a single story from many versions of traditional legends, told by voices that in this way try to understand each other and the country.
Of course there are differences. Here everything takes place in one of the cemeteries and whoever speaks is dead. But above all in The Bazaar of the DeadMabanckou leaves the first person of Chili pepper and makes it second. Someone says to the protagonist Liwa, who is “you” from the first sentence: “You repeat it to yourself over and over again, to the point that you have already convinced yourself: a new life began for you” at the moment of your death. It is never defined who this first person is, but perhaps one might think that it is Africa, with all its history, including slavery, that is here compared to death, as Toni Morrison does in her novels from across the Atlantic. And in reality, taking this comparison between slavery and death as a starting point, the book could take on an even more complex and deeper meaning.
The voices that narrate are dead people who guide Liwa to his new existence as he decides whether to return to the world of the living to seek revenge or to “breathe life and love into those who have been unjustly deprived of it,” as it is repeated in the book’s final words. And since the roots of Mabanckou’s writings are African and he therefore rejects binarism, this option turns out to be false: the dilemma of revenge vs. life or love could be resolved in favor of both options simultaneously.
The author dedicates the novel to Pauline Kengué, his mother, “whose fables” he “more or less” takes up; and Roger Kimangou, his father, who contradicted “my mother’s versions.” Yes, there is more than one version of everything in this book. Everything that is told unites the local (Pointe Noir) with the colonialist West (particularly France) and the stories are all united because in African worldviews the stories change from one to the other and “last forever.”
Therefore, this novel is not just about Liwa or any of the other dead people. It is a concert of political and personal stories, fantastic, legendary and realistic, a concert that always denies the binary European thinking. It is not right to return to the world of the living to seek revenge, this is often repeated, but there are cases where the idea of bringing love to the living involves revenge; Revenge is justice and each individual’s life is also everyone’s.
The Bazaar of the Dead
By Alain Mabanckou
Edhasa. Translation: Lucia Dorin
248 pages, $32,900
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