Richard Ali A Mutu

The first-ever novel to be translated from Lingala into English, Mr Fix It is a brief, vivid look at life for a small group of precariously employed twenty- and thirty-somethings in the Congolese city of Kinshasa. The rhythms of the dialogue are particularly pleasurable, especially as they evoke the ways in which the speakers of Lingala (as with other African languages) have adopted and co-opted French and English words in inventive ways. I would have liked for Mr Fix It to be fleshed out just a little more—this is really more novella than novel and the ending is quite abrupt—but this is a promising English-language debut from Richard Ali A Mutu.… (altro)