Pandora in the Congo [Paperback]

Albert Sánchez Piñol (Author), Mara Faye Lethem (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 3, 2009

It is 1914 when Marcus Garvey, a bedraggled British manservant, emerges from the depths of the Belgian Congo. He is the sole survivor of an ill-fated mining expedition in which both his masters, William and Richard Craver, died and from which their African porters fled. Garvey returns to London carrying two diamonds of extraordinary size, spinning a story too unspeakably terrifying to be believed. He is promptly arrested. Tommy Thompson, a London ghostwriter for a ghostwriter for a ghostwriter (don’t ask!), is approached by his attorney to document Garvey’s unholy African odyssey. From his prison cell awaiting the murder trial, Garvey recounts the mind-boggling horror that the Craver mining expedition encountered in the dark recesses of the Congo. Exactly how did the Craver brothers die? What unearthly forces would drive men to commit such acts of immeasurable brutality? Could love have possibly bloomed in the heart of such darkness? Only Tommy can untangle the mysteries of the Garvey case. A brilliant literary pastiche and tongue-in-cheek pulp African adventure, Pandora in the Congo is, at its heart, a fabulist literary exploration of imagination, reminding us that there is rarely one version to any story, and always more than meets the eye.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Piñols second novel (after Cold Skin) is a fanciful metafiction that lampoons adventure stories while telling one with great enthusiasm. Nineteen-year-old orphan Tommy Thomson, a ghost writer struggling to make a living in WWI London, is hired to record the account of a man on trial for murdering two sons of a duke on an expedition in the Congo. The tale that unfolds draws from Stanley, Conrad and Verne, and borrows names from historical figures, often with irony (the man on trial, for instance, is named Marcus Garvey). Tommy spends four years writing and rewriting Marcuss tale in which the doomed brothers and their enslaved African porters turned miners encounter a subterranean race reminiscent of Vernes Morlocks. (Marcus calls them Tectons and portrays them as a barbarous threat to above-ground civilization.) Piñol has layers of commentary at work, touching on perception, the nature of literature, the need for heroes and the faults of hubris. Its a smart book, and Piñol poses piercing questions; the adventure yarn that ties it all together is great entertainment. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

Tommy Thomson is a ghostwriter for a ghostwriter for a ghostwriter—a layering that sets the tone here—who writes pulp adventure novels, one of the most egregious of them being Pandora in the Congo, the book that got Tommy a job writing up Marcus Garvey’s unbelievable trip to the Congo. Awaiting trial for two murders and the possession of two enormous diamonds, Garvey spins a tale of horrific tribulation, adventure, discovery, and true love in the Belgian Congo. Tommy lashes those elements together and becomes increasingly involved with the story, so far as to talk to the murdered men’s father. Tommy intersperses the story of his own life with Garvey’s such that the trials of a ghostwriter, life in a boardinghouse, and the beginning of World War I also read as pulp adventures. Eventually, Tommy finishes the book, and Marcus goes to trial, at which point all threads are woven together, and the truth proves to be yet another story. Although exploiting pulp formulas, Piñol highlights the nature of truth and love with unexpected elegance. --Regina Schroeder

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Canongate U.S.; Original edition (March 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 184767187X
• ISBN-13: 978-1847671875
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,095,769 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Jungle Book for the 21st Century, February 27, 2009

By 

Philip Pogson (Ryde, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Pandora in the Congo (Paperback)

This is such a clever and multi-layered book that it seems perilous for a literary amateur to venture a review. Similar to Eco's "The Name of the Rose" Pandora in the Congo works as an example of its genre at one level, and a sophisticated critique of genre on another. On the surface we are presented with an exciting African adventure novel that goes underground in the spirit of Jules Verne; in that sense I could not put it down. Yet there are subtle and sophisticated ideas at play and plot twists and turns that it is not fair to allude to in a review. The reader's emotional associations with particular characters, including the narrator and the main character whose story he tells, are thrown into question at several points, as is the nature of literary truth and authorship. Thankfully, the "stitching" that holds Pandora together is rarely obvious, a tribute to the skill of the author, although at times I was not sure if anachronisms such as singing "God save the Queen" in the 1920s were deliberate or simply overlooked in the translation and editorial process. This novel is almost too clever, but for me it does not sucumb to the ernest, laboured literary criticism wrapped up in narrative that other post-Modern would-be epics cannot seem to avoid.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, Exciting, Exotic Book, April 13, 2009

By 

quarmix "quar-mix" (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pandora in the Congo (Paperback)

I picked up this book as a result of it being mentioned in The Spectator as one of the best books of 2008, and it certainly is brilliant, one of the best books I've read in a long time. A combination of different genres, from Edgar Rice Burroughs to H.G. Wells to H.P. Lovecraft, it's consistently, invariably brilliant, exciting, exotic and fascinating throughout. It tells the story of an old man looking back at a book he wrote (and then rewrote many times) in his early years; this time around being the time he will write the "real story".

I suspect the reason the book has not garnered more publicity is its creepy sexual element, similar to but not as stark as what was explored in Pinol's first book, "Cold Skin", which was deeply disturbing but highly memorable. Some readers may find it a bit offensive in its explicitness but it adds a certain exotic fantasy element to the book which makes it quite unlike any other of its genre. Other than that, the book is a substantial improvement over "Cold Skin" in its terrific cast of characters (including a rampaging turtle), and its intricate and consistently fascinating plot.

The real question is whether or not here there is an actual piece of literary art - or does the subject matter and the plot bring it down to a lower level. This particular question has been driving me crazy for a while - clearly the intricate, wild story line is crafted at the highest level, but the subject matter is so utterly different and difficult - does the subject matter drag it down, or has Pinol created some kind of new style of literature, and if so, what would you call it? The book defies exact classification as fantasy, horror, adventure, so it's difficult to think of who to recommend it to except for people who are interested in reading everything that is new and exciting. So my final thought is that the book deserves more attention than it has received so far, and so unless someone convinces me otherwise it's staying high on my list of books.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lit nerd's review, April 7, 2009

By 

Jess - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pandora in the Congo (Paperback)

I'll be honest. When I first picked this up, I was intrigued but not overwhelmingly excited about reading it.

And then I started. Within seconds, I was hooked. The protagonist's name is Thomas Thomson, which immediately sets up a tone of whimsy and sort of naivety, which is exactly how the protagonist portrays himself. All one needs to know is Mr. Thomson was the ghostwriter of a ghostwriter of a ghostwriter and that leads him to a position working for a barrister writing the story of a prisoner awaiting trial.

Throughout the course of the story, the reader begins to wonder who is telling the truth and questioning the outrageousness of the story the prisoner tells and Mr. Thomson relays. By the time I reached the middle of the book, I was completely absorbed in the stories taking place in the Congo and England.

Strangely enough, Mr. Thomson's story evokes a bit of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness - whether or not that was intentional, I do not know, but I certainly saw some parallels. I also saw some similarities between Pandora in the Congo and Life of Pi, another favorite of mine because of how it makes the reader wonder what on earth just happened at the end of the book and which story is the truth and where is this really going!

All in all, I was completely absorbed by this book. Upon completion, I put it down and simply sat there, digesting everything I had read. It's rare that I experience that sort of "Wow" moment, but Pandora in the Congo certainly does that and much more.