MATATA

by Malcolm McConnell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 22, 1971

Matata is Swahili for trouble and a bloody understatement for the situation in the Congo in the last holiday week of 1965. A rebellion has just been crushed but the bush is still a sputtering confusion of ANC forces, U.S. military and C.I.A. mercenaries, tribal fetishists, and embittered old Colons. All so many memoranda to the bored and insulated diplomatic community in Leopoldsville, where Foreign Service trainee Steve Sherman and his wife Lisa are beginning to lose their Peace Corps illusions. Complete awakening comes in the course of a routine week in the field, when Steve gains fatal insights about the dark continent and the dark side of his own bright country, and meets doom in the form of his opposite number, Pierre-Marie Tshimpama, a tragically retribalized evolue. Lisa, in Leo meanwhile, can't hear the explosions for the ice and the bedsprings and is doomed in her own way by the same absurd, irreversible logic. McConnell left the Foreign Service to write Matata and the experience shows everywhere -- sights, types and political intricacies, and especially in the furious release of a pent-up ethical sense. He's managed all the same to build a tight engrossing novel around the indictment.

Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1971

Categories: FICTION