Issue #5: Book Review: African Psycho by Alain Mabancko

“I have decided to kill Germaine on December 29. I have been thinking about this for weeks”. African Psycho opens with those two sentences that immediately get you interested in reading what unfolds in the book’s pages. The narrator and villainous protagonist, Grégoire, an orphan and car mechanic born in a town called He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot, decides to become a famous serial killer like his idol, Angoualima. Grégoire regards Angoualima as “the most famous of our country’s assassins”.

The novel eventually circles back to his murderous plan, but first, Grégoire narrates how he came up to that point. He had a few petty crimes under his belt, but his prime motivation is his intense desire for public attention and recognition. Whenever he commits his minor crimes, he checks the media for a mention and is often left disappointed when his deeds don’t get reported.

Grégoire was a pick-up child abandoned by his parents and whose upkeep became the government’s responsibility. Raised by foster parents, some of whom he described as decent people who cared for him, Grégoire loathes his biological parents, especially his mother, whom he always described in the most disparaging ways. In a way, I think his consuming desire for fame is his attempt at filling the void in his life. His biological parents never loved him, so he yearned to substitute that with admiration and fear from the public. Another void in Grégoire’s life I believe he desperately wanted to fill was the lack of a father figure, which probably made him adopt his famous serial-killing idol. He spends a substantial portion of the book regaling us with tales of Angoualima’s infamy.

I should warn the would-be reader that African Psycho is an uncomfortable read. The book will make you wince. Our narrator is a furious and profoundly misogynistic man, and that reflects in his narration. Keep that in mind if you decide to read the book.

There are many ways to interpret a book, and my interpretation is that African Pyscho is a story of how men direct hatred at women when they feel the world is against them. One of the most famous quotes from Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns comes to mind: “Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.”

I wasn’t expecting too much because the book was originally written in French and translated into English. I mistrust translated stories because I feel a lot of meaning is stripped off during translation, but this was not the case with African Psycho. The writing is lyrical, and the psychotic voice of the narrator is expertly reflected. The book is laced with dark humour, and it made me giggle a number of times. It made me a little uncomfortable, but it was a good read nevertheless.