African Psycho concerns a would-be serial killer, Gregoire Nakobomayo, and the spiritual relationship he has developed with his phantom mentor, a far more accomplished serial killer, Angoualima.

The title recalls Bret Easton Ellis' infamous book but while Ellis' narrator was blank, and the book eschewed any kind of psychological exposition, accepting pure psychosis as the bottomline, Mabanckou's protagonist is all psychology and relentless internal chatter and prevarication. The act of deciding to kill, immediately exposed in the novel's first line, "I have decided to kill Germaine on December 29,� puts the psychological front and center. Whatever one may say about it, killing someone requires both psychological and logistical preparedness. This aspect is iterated within the first few paragraphs, when Gregoire introduces his deceased idol, Angoualima, the phantom to whom he continually speaks about his criminal intentions. Little by little, Gregoire interweaves Angoualima's life and criminal exploits with his own. Despite his string of previously botched criminal attempts, Gregoire's final decision and failure to kill Germaine, his live-in girlfriend and a professional prostitute, leads to an abrupt unraveling.

Although the gruesome descriptions that characterize crime fiction are many, it is Mabanckou's inventive use of language that surprises and relieves the reader by injecting humor into this disturbing subject. What had been thinly veiled geographical references to the Congo region in his past fiction have taken on comedic twists in the present narrative. Two such examples of Mabanckou's playful onomastics are the name of Gregoire's shantytown, "Celui-qui-boit-de-l'eau-est-un-idot," [He-Who-Drinks-the-Water-Is-An-Idiot] and the local road in the red-light district, "Rue-Cent-francs-seulement" [Ten-Francs-Only Road]. Such attention to the comedic appears throughout the narrative as well. This occurs, in one instance, during the report of an eyewitness to Angoualima's crime in which the reporter poses a comedic repetition of enthusiastic "Et alors?" that are followed by the witness' exclamatory repetitions, "Croyez-moi!" The narrator adds to the reader'�s amusement by recounting that journalism students throughout the country "dissect" this interview for its use of the technique that has been referred to as "Et alors? Croyez-moi!"

In sum, African Psycho most surprisingly engages readers through style, not gore, a remarkable feat for a narrative that takes murder as its subject and that references probably the most gruesome novel in recent American literature. Moreover, it does so with intimacy rater than the standoff-ish dispassion that characterizes novels that seek to contend with the volence engendered by the amorality and ennui of contemporary society.

Lauded in France for its fresh and witty style, African Psycho is a testament to this novelist's exceptional ability to carry over to prose a poet's talent for the crafting of words.

Alain Mabanckou was born in 1966 in Congo-Brazzaville (French Congo). He currently resides in the United States, where he teaches literature at the University of Michigan. One of Francophone Africa's most prolific contemporary writers, he is the author of six volumes of poetry and five novels. He received the "Prix Litteraire de l'Afrique Noire" in 1999 for his first novel, "Bleu-Blanc-Rouge" (1998). His latest novel, "Verre Cass�" (Editions du Seuil, 2005), was awarded "Le Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie."

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I still cannot understand why my last deed, which took place only three months ago, wasn't covered by the national press or the press of the country over there. Only four insignificant lines in The Street Is Dying, a small neighborhood weekly, and the lines devoted to my crime were buried between ads for Monganga soap and No-Confidence shoes. As I have kept the clipping, I can't help laughing when I read it again:

"A nurse at the Adolphe-Cisse hospital was assaulted by a sexual maniac upon her return home from work. A complaint was lodged at the police station of the He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot neighborhood."

I assure you, I spent the whole day after this deed listening to Radio Right Bank in the hope that it would convey the facts in detail to make up for this news item, which had hurt my pride and come as a real snub to me, even though I wasn't named in it. I have always suffered from the fact that my actions keep being credited to some other of the town's shady characters.

But they said nothing! This was the day I understood the meaning of radio silence. I became aware that my gesture was not worthy of a criminal of Angoualima's ilk, he who would leave his mark by sending his victims' private parts to the national press and the press of the country over there by registered mail.

I'm telling you: Angoualima, my idol, was something else. How would it be possible not think about him? I make no secret of the fact that his disappearance upset me a great deal at the time, although it did help the police who had been looking for him for years. It just wasn't possible that the Great Master would die like this, as if he didn't have any personality, and that he would leave me an orphan. Seeing a man who used to put the town to fire and sword now immobile, his body left to the winds blowing in from the sea, in the center of a circle he had drawn himself. Who would have believed it? I was abandoned. I no longer had reason to live. I cried. I resented the authorities and the inhabitants of He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot. People here and there expressed relief, but I cried foul. Surely, my idol had been pushed to the limit. By way of consolation, I told myself that this death was an opportunity for me. Having never come into contact with the Great Master when he was alive, I now had the chance to pay him a visit, at his gravesite. His spirit would talk to me!

The whole town knows that, before committing suicide, my idol, Angoualima, had sent the national press and the press of the country over there an audio cassette on which he spent 120 minutes repeating, "I shit on society," the very words that the neighborhood's most popular band, the Brothers The-Same-People-Always-Get-To-Eat-In-This-Shitty-Country, later used in their hit song.

His end came as a surprise to everybody, it's true. No one could have thought of it. Here was my idol, thumbing his nose one last time. He'd really shat on society, as he said. I now understand what he was doing: Above all, he wanted to avoid entering legend on his knees, like a boxer long at the top of his game who gets humiliated by some unknown challenger just as his career is waning.

In this case, then, the Great Master had known how to leave the ring before having to face one fight too many. That's how I choose to interpret his venerable gesture. I'm not interested in what was discussed later . . .

*

Still, it's weird: Every time one of my deeds ends in fiasco, something, I don't know what exactly, compels me to think about Angoualima, my idol, and to make for his grave in the cemetery of the Dead-Who-Are-Not-Allowed-To-Sleep in the first hours of the day. There I talk to him, listen to him take me to task, call me an imbecile, an idiot, or a pitiful character. I agree, abandon myself to the fascination he exerts over me, and take these insults as a sign of the affection that only he shows me. Now if only I could convince myself that it is not in my interest to compare myself to him or desperately seek his approval as a master of crime, I might be able to start working with a free spirit. To each his own manner and personality. I certainly have tried to pursue this course. It's not as simple as it seems.

Why take Angoualima as a model and not another of our town's bandits? I finally found an explanation. Actually, when I was just a teenager with skeletal legs, drifting through the sticky streets of the He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot neighborhood, playing scarf-ball with other kids my age, I would already hear people talk about Angoualima and would recognize myself in each of his gestures, which the whole country decried. I felt admiration for him. In a certain way he had preceded me in the type of existence I dreamed of for myself. So as not to despair, I persuaded myself that I resembled him, that his destiny and mine had the same arc, and that little by little I would eventually climb each step until my head, shaped like a rectangular brick, deserved a crown of laurels.