Description
In a Congolese village where the boundary between the seen and the spiritual is thin, a porcupine serves as the boy Kibandi’s double and guide—an unseen presence tasked with protecting, punishing, and shaping his fate. When Kibandi is taken into the night at the age of eleven and made to endure a brutal initiation, the porcupine’s long years of servitude take on a new urgency, turning survival into a reckoning. Now finally freed from his master, the porcupine narrator steps forward to tell his story, offering a vivid, intimate account of power, obedience, and the cost of being used as an instrument of another’s destiny. With Alain Mabanckou’s sharp, lyrical storytelling and wry immediacy, this memoir-like tale explores themes of identity, spiritual agency, and the haunting ways childhood bargains with fate.
Available Editions
paperback
Counterpoint Press
Published Jan 1, 2012
160 pages
ISBN: 9781593764807
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Details
First Published
2012
Language
eng
Content Warnings
No content warnings identified.