Bernardo Atxaga,Margaret Jull Costa
A brooding novel of colonial intrigue in the Congo, from the author of ,The Accordionist's Son , and ,Obabakoak,The year is 1903, and the garrison of Yangambi on the banks of the Congo is under the command of Captain Lalande Biran. The captain is also a poet whose ambition is to amass a fortune and return to the literary cafÃ©s of Paris. His glamorous wife, Christine, has a further ambition: to own seven houses in France, a house for every year he has been abroad. At Lalande Biran's side are the ex-legionnaire van Thiegel, a brutal womanizer, and the servile, treacherous Donatien, who dreams of running a brothel. The officers spend their days guarding enslaved rubber-tappers and kidnapping young girls, and at their hands the jungle is transformed into a wild circus of human ambition and absurdity. But everything changes with the arrival of a new officer and brilliant marksman: the enigmatic Chrysostome Liege. An outstanding new novel from the critically acclaimed and prizewinning author Bernardo Atxaga, ,Seven Houses in France, is a blackly comic tale which reveals the darkest sides of human desire.
Fiction,Historical,Historical Fiction,European Literature,Spanish Literature,Cultural,Africa,Cultural,Spain,Literary Fiction,Contemporary,Literature,Historical,Cultural,France
Seven Houses in France