Book description
1903, and Captain Lalande Biran, overseeing a garrison on the banks
of the Congo, has an ambition: to amass a fortune and return to the
literary cafés of Paris.
His glamorous wife Christine has a further ambition: to own seven
houses in France, a house for every year he has been abroad.
At the Captain's side are an ex-legionnaire womaniser, and a
servile, treacherous man who dreams of running a brothel. At their
hands the jungle is transformed into a wild circus of human ambition
and absurdity. But everything changes with the arrival of a new
officer and brilliant marksman: the enigmatic Chrysostome Liège.
Bernardo Atxaga was born in Gipuzkoa in Spain in 1951 and lives in
the Basque Country, writing in Basque and Spanish. He is a
prizewinning novelist and poet, whose books, including Obabakoak
and The Accordionist's Son, have won critical acclaim in
Spain and abroad. His works have been translated into twenty-two languages.
Margaret Jull Costa has been a literary translator from Spanish and
Portugese for over twenty years, translating such writers as José
Saramago, Eça de Queiroz, Luis Fernando Verissimo and Fernando
Pessoa. Her work has brought her a number of prizes, the most recent
of which was the 2010 Premio Valle-Inclán for Javier MarÃas' Your
Face Tomorrow 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell.
