Little Boys Come from the Stars

With masterful craftsmanship and a sweetly scathing tone, award-winning Congolese novelist Emmanuel Dongala has fashioned this touching yet profound post-colonial satire.

Little Boys Come from the Stars is the story of a turbulent African nation seen through the eyes of a precocious teen dubbed Matapari (“trouble”). Though his father is a reclusive scholar, his mother a confused Catholic, and his uncle a shameless opportunist, Matapari is a regular kid who wears Reeboks, drinks Coke, and reads Japanese comics. But when his family becomes the center of the revolution, Matapari emerges as the ideal narrator–an ironically innocent voice that makes bearable and even humorous the realities it describes.