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.

Okapia johnstoni could only be imagined in early twentieth-century Europe from descriptions comparing this almost mythical central African creature to the unicorn. Antwerp zoo commissioned two English adventurers to bring a live specimen back from the Belgian Congo. The 1912 trip by Willis Reed and Guy Nichols is fictionalised here as an odyssey upon the rivers and through the jungles of central Africa. It is not one of darkness but of well-meaning imperial arrogance, as the two explorers come face to face with the limits of their own folly and the absurdity of trying to name the unnameable. Translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns. 160pp, UK. AFLAME BOOKS.

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

Since around the 14th Century this heroic narrative has been handed down the generations orally within the Mongo People, and now has been published in English for the first time. It is 'simultaneously an expose of the great deeds of a legendary Mongo hero and the fascinating socio-historical, economic and relgious context in which these people have lived and continue to live'. 126pp. KENYA. EAST AFRICAN EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS.

Hailed as one of the Africa's 100 Best Books of the Twentieth Century, this was Sony Labou Tansi's response to the death of close friends during a bloody military and political crackdown in Congo. The novel takes place in an imaginary African country run by the latest in a series of cannibalistic dictators who has captured Martial, the leader of the opposition, and his family. Though shot, knifed, butchered, and bled, Martial's spirit lives on to guide his followers in their fight against the dictators. Facing censorship, Tansi insisted that his book was a fable and that if he were ever given the opportunity to write about real events, he would be much more direct rather than follow the torturous paths of a novel. This crisp translation by Alison Dundy maintains the fast-paced action and bitingly satiric tone of the original French. 150pp, USA. INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS.

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.

In Dublin, a newspaper editor called Cartwright is found dead. One of his colleagues, Owen Simmons, discovers a dossier on Cartwright's desk. And in the dossier Owen finds a photograph, which brings him back to a dusty road in Africa and to the woman he once loved. 288pp, IRELAND. PENGUIN BOOKS.

It is 1914. In the heart of the Belgian Congo, Garvey, a bedraggled British manservant, emerges from the jungle. He is the lone survivor of a mining expedition in which both his masters have died, and all of the party's African porters have fled. With him, he carries two huge diamonds. From his prison cell in London, Garvey recounts his horrific and thrilling ordeal. Young Tommy Thomson is assigned to transcribe Garvey's story and only he can untangle the extraordinary mysteries of the Garvey case. 368pp, UK. CANONGATE.

History has been silenced in a modern African state - only the voices of the dead cry out for justice. The cry is answered by the Woman of Bronze, determined to act against the political and moral corruption of male-dominated society. Translated from the French by Clive Wake. 129pp, UK. HEINEMANN AFRICAN WRITERS SERIES.

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.