Dealing with the Dead A Novel
Dealing with the Dead by Alain Mabanckou, published by New Press in 2025, is a novel that presents a unique exploration of Congolese history through a ghostly lens. In this 208-page work, readers are introduced to Liwa Ekimakingaï, who awakens in a cemetery after being buried at the age of twenty-two. Trapped in his flamboyant attire, he encounters the other residents of the cemetery, each with their own intricate stories of life and death.
As Liwa grapples with his bewildering situation, he is determined to return home to his beloved grandmother for one last visit, despite the warnings from the spectral inhabitants around him. The narrative intertwines his fragmented memories and the unsettling rumors surrounding his demise, leading him on a quest for understanding. This novel delves into themes of ambition, community, and the impact of political violence, offering a satirical perspective on corruption in modern Central Africa.
Official synopsis Publisher
From one of Africa’s greatest living writers, a ghostly reckoning with Congolese history
“Alain Mabanckou addresses the reader with exuberant inventiveness in novels that are brilliantly imaginative in their forms of storytelling. His voice is vividly colloquial, mischievous and often outrageous as he explores, from multiple angles, the country where he grew up, drawing on its political conflicts and compromises, disappointments and hopes. He acts the jester, but with serious intent and lacerating effect.”
-Man Booker International Prize judges’ citation
One day in the Congolese town of Pointe-Noire, Liwa Ekimakingaï wakes to find himself in a cemetery where, three days earlier, he had been buried at the age of twenty-two in a pair of flared purple trousers in which he is now trapped forever. All around him are the other residents of the cemetery, all of whom have their own complex stories of life and death to share.
Bewildered by his predicament and unwilling to relinquish his tender bond with his devoted grandmother, Liwa makes his way back home to see her one last time, against all spectral advice. As he does, disturbing rumors swirl together with Liwa’s jumbled memories of his last night on earth, leading him to try and solve the mystery of his own untimely demise.
Sure to appeal to readers of George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo, Dealing with the Dead is an exuberant, phantasmagorical tale of ambition, community, and forces beyond human control, and a scathing satire on corruption and political violence by one of the most recognized chroniclers of modern Central Africa.
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