I came across Broken Glass during the period when my mum was still hospitalized, a lot of things were running through my mind then but I spoke nothing but silence. My heart spoke more than my mouth did.
The title Broken Glass caught me. When I came across this book, I stayed out for a while just staring at the title “Broken Glass,” a lot of things were running through my mind but I wanted to know what it had to say, what story did it tell, so I flipped open the pages of the book.
Then I read that the story was written by Alain Mabanckou, a Congolese author known for his humor and sharp social commentary. I was curious—how would someone blend comedy with African tragedy, satire with sadness? That mix intrigued me.
What I didn’t know was how much this book would stick with me, how it would mess with my head, make me laugh in one line and frown in the next. It felt like sitting at a bar with an old man who’s been through everything and finally decided to tell you the truth raw, twisted, and unfiltered.
Our narrator is a retired schoolteacher; he spends his days in the bar called Credit Gone West in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, and his nickname is Broken Glass. The bar owner hands him a notebook and suggests that he should write the stories of the regulars of the bar, drunkards, misfits, people with haunted pasts.
However, when Broken Glass starts recording the lives of other people, he gradually drifts into narrating his own story. The borders between the mess of other people and his own failures begin to be blurred. And what we end up with is a wild, funny, heartbreaking, and brutally honest stream of memories, rants, regrets and cultural commentary.
The book is disorganized. It has minimal punctuation, no quotation marks, run-on sentences and no clear breaks. It is like a whirlwind. That is what makes it seem real though.
It sounds like a person who is trying to find meaning in the world where he has lost his own one.
The first time I was not good. The writing was sloppy. The narrator was speaking incoherently. I was asking myself, where is this leading?
However, somewhere on page 30 I ceased trying to find direction and simply gave in to the voice.
Broken Glass talks sarcastically, bitterly, humorously and extremely sad. He is funny but in a manner that you can tell he is concealing pain. He satirizes government, the church, colonization, bad education and hypocrisy in all its forms. He even ridicules himself. It is not so common to be honest.
The more I read the more I felt that I knew him. I have known men like that--old fellows who, over a drink, tell you tales that have a funny sound till you discover they are full of regrets they cannot call by name.
I was in that bar too, I was sitting, listening to them, not judging, just being there.
This book struck me in waves.
At times I found myself laughing out loud (especially on the part of the narrator and his absurd comparisons and harsh truth). There were even passages, though, that brought me up short. Such as when Broken Glass says he misses his wife, but there is nothing he can do about it. Or when he poses like he is writing to the future, although he knows that no one may ever read what he has written.
It reminded me of the fact that we all wish to be heard. Not to forget. To matter.
and we are sometimes left to sit on our own version of Credit Gone West - be it a bar, a room, a phone screen, and we talk to the nothingness, hoping that somebody, somewhere, is listening.
It made me recall how not all broken people are on the road to being fixed. Other times they simply want to be noticed.
Broken Glass is not a book to read to follow the story. It is a book that you read to be in the presence of a voice: an honest, angry, poetic and very human voice.
It is a book which says: See the mess. Be in it. Mock at it. And perhaps, perhaps, catholicize it.
Alain Mabanckou does not provide answers. He simply makes you a glass in your hand, turns down the music and lets his characters make you hear the sort of stories you will hear at the end of the world.
And occasionally that is the very sort of story you want.
If you don't want nice resolutions and perfect people, if you need a novel that tastes like life, bitter, foul, funny and wise, then go meet Broken Glass. Hear him.
He has much to say.
The last image was gotten from web:
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