Pandora in the Congo - Softcover

A literary dynamite charge. * * Independent on Sunday * * Albert Sanchez Pinol is possessed of an exceptional, fecund and devious imagination. -- David Mitchell Wonderful. * * The Times * * An action-packed adventure story in the best Rider Haggard tradition and a sophisticated reflection on the imaginative power of literature. Impressive and most unusual. * * Independent * * Going into that realm of hyperbolic fabulation where Umberto Eco has long made safari, Pandora in the Congo marks Sanchez Pinol's emergence as a significant European writer. -- Giles Foden * * Guardian * * A rip-roaring historical adventure. * * Scotland on Sunday * * An African brew with a dash of derring-do. Laced with a heady post-modern investigation into the dark art of telling tales. -- Christian House * * Independent * * Free of the sometimes stilted quality that dogs translated novels, this is simultaneously a gripping yarn and a genre-bending re-examination of the fiction of a bygone age. -- Alex Larman * * Observer * * Pandora in the Congo is a wonderful book on so many levels - the story within a story of Garvey's time in Africa, as recounted by Thomson, is thrilling and compulsive . . . Pinol deftly weaves his theme of deception into all strands of the story . . . this is a cracking story on so many levels - and one of which any master of magical realism would be just as proud as a teller of tales of derring do. -- Simon Appleby * * Bookgeeks.co.uk * *

It is 1914. In the heart of the Belgian Congo, Garvey, a bedraggled British manservant, emerges from the jungle. He is the lone survivor of a mining expedition in which both his masters have died, and all of the party's African porters have fled. With him, he carries two huge diamonds. From his prison cell in London, Garvey recounts his horrific and thrilling ordeal. Young Tommy Thomson is assigned to transcribe Garvey's story and only he can untangle the extraordinary mysteries of the Garvey case.