Socio-political satire of 1980s Zaire. Translated from the French by J.A. Underwood. 170pp, UK, MARION BOYARS.

An Irish writer, travels to the Congo in 1962, and charts the collapse of the colonial regime and the rise of Patrice Lumumba in the background of an intense personal relationship with an Italian journalist. 313pp, UK. HODDER HEADLINE.

2005 1997 0755360338 Paperback

Beginning in 1963, this novel follows the fortunes of Donovan 'Mac' Mackay as he emerges from the end of schooling. He is initiated into manhood when he becomes a mercenary recruited by a logging company to protect their interests in the Congo. 298pp, UK. JANUS PUBLISHING COMPANY.

When a young boy is sent by his parents to a country village in The Democratic Republic of the Congo for his social education, the impact of this new cultural environment causes unexpected results. ix, 85pp, USA. iUNIVERSE.COM, INC, 0595282946

New in paperback. Bruno Salvador, known to friends and enemies alike as Salvo, is the ever-innocent, twenty-nine-year-old orphaned love-child of a Catholic Irish missionary and a Congolese headman's daughter. Educated first at mission school in the East Congolese province of Kivu, and later at a discreet sanctuary for the secret sons of Rome, Salvo is inspired by his mentor Brother Michael to train as a professional interpreter in the minority African languages of which, almost from birth, he has been an obsessive collector. Soon a rising star in his profession, he is courted by City corporations, hospitals, law courts, the Immigration services and the mushrooming overworld of British Intelligence. As the story opens, a contrary and irresistible love is dawning in him. Despatched to a no-name island in the North Sea to attend a top-secret meeting between Western financiers and East Congolese warlords, Salvo is obliged to interpret matters never intended for his re-awoken African conscience. 400pp, UK. HODDER HEADLINE.

Fictional treatment of Mbutu's takeover of Zaire. 'In Philippe, Harry Smart has created an engaging black intellectual African hero, whose predicament and that of his country, will stay in the mind of the reader long after the book is finished'. 292pp, UK. DEDALUS LTD.