"Petit Piment" by Alain Mabanckou

The life of the protagonists of this wonderfully told, unspeakably sad, yet often funny story begins depressing. One finds the stored wrapped in sheets baby on the doorstep of an orphanage in Loango. The incredibly long name, the priest Papa Moupelo baptizes him is conveniently shortened to “Moses”.

It’s the Fifties, Congo is a decades uncontrollably exploited colony bitterly fighting for their independence and the Home, originally performed by white missionaries, degenerates into a place of arbitrariness and violence. When the post of Director will be filled, give corruption and tribal affiliation the scales in favor of the children hater Dieudonné Ngoulmoumako, the four members of the family brings as a handyman and three hundred rules with a cruel hand over the children.

The lovable priest Moupelo who could always spread hope and confidence, the mini-tyrant over time markets as well as the supervisor Sabine, who is Moses as a mother. Both disappear in the country, where Unwanted chased or equal murdered without parting words in the uncertain mists of hellish political turmoil.

Many hard years, episodes and changes later located Moses back to this place of his childhood. The building is now converted into a penal institution, and the fallen narrator writes about his experiences in a jail cell down. The haunting words Papa Moupelos have remained in his memory, especially the Old Testament stories of Moses, who was to leave even as a baby, like he said but later the angel of the Lord appeared, “in a flame of a bush up hit “, and the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, whose message had inspired all children”.

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He thinks he’s the son of a demon, the one evil – must cast – sneaky tricks like each other to throwing Maniokstücken. The child sits bravely resisted, however, is exposed irretrievably the powerful man and the liana with which he strikes.

With the revolution that “came upon us like rain” and the Congo in late 1969 converts to a socialist people’s Republic, the now three-year-old Moses finally loses his naivete. Had he kept the orphanage long time for a “school for gifted,” says he now opens his same age friend and only confidant Bonaventure eyes. Your home should want for “brats” that no one, a prison for maladjusted young people. Bonaventure is more realistic and less introverted than Moses, and he not only builds on God’s help like this.

Both boys suffer, like the other children, under a pair of twins, which exerts much like the Great to their advantage Terror , After Moses spoils their food supplies secretly with chili powder, it must indeed redress afford but has respect, recognition and the nickname “Petit Piment” earned. Soon he concocts an accomplice of the twins an escape plan with them and lets Bonaventure back.

This is the beginning of Moses’ years of Odyssey as stray petty criminal. On the large market in Pointe-Noire, the twins and Moses established as her assistant, and in a brothel he finally finds his longing, a friendly, caring home, except for command of the corrupt, power-hungry mayor brutal militias with batons and tear gas for ” order “provide on the Grand Marché. The prostitutes are shipped in SUVs and deported to an unknown ordeal, the street boys sold soft to the coast. Petit Piment must not only give up his life, but his soul takes sustained damage. His memory does not work anymore, he loses his identity and to undergo a long treatment. But it never comes.

The first-person narrator relates his first childishly simple perspective, the terrible violence regime of ruthless dictator Mobutu. The orphanage Dieudonné Ngoulmoumakos is a small image of the whole. Change true horror scenes with absurd-sounding anti-imperialist Indoktrinationsappellen and all sorts of nonsensical political regulations, mocked cautious about Moses. Over the years, the boy matures, the all external influences and suggestions at first astonished, absorbs believing and trusting and filters later with brilliant, razor-sharp mind, a critical, intelligent observers. However, it has been taken so much in life that he seeks revenge.

Moses’ tragic history takes the reader from the beginning caught and does not let go of him more. The author’s vocabulary is exceptionally diverse. He tells a very impressive, entertaining way in a lively, rousing voice full of lightness and makes a complex picture of the complex Congolese society with their religions, ethnicities, languages ​​and conflicts arise.