About the Book:

His nickname is Matapari, which means "trouble." He is an African child of our time - brilliant, mischievous, postmodern - caught in the cross fire of successive postcolonial regimes in a central African country. Matapari grows up in a world of talking drums, the Internet, and satellite TV, a world of dictators who remake themselves as democrats overnight. His uncle is an opportunist looking to make a place for himself at the top level of government; his father is a scholarly recluse obsessed with proving that black people have played key roles in Western history. Matapari is a young man in the middle - but the shrewdness and wit with which he tells his often riotously funny story set him apart from his relatives.