Gombo

In certain countries, to criticize the President’s wife can land you straight in jail. And it’s hot in prison, even hotter than under the African sun beating down on the streets outside. The secrets that float around inside are hot enough to get your fingers burned. Secrets which call into question powerful Western pharmaceutical companies; secrets which an overly curious, small-time Cameroonian journalist is better off not knowing.

It’s time for Jean-Christophe Assamoa to make himself scarce. But in the teeming city of Douala, it’s not easy to hide from prying eyes. Luckily, Assamoa learns by chance that one of his old classmates from university in France is living in the city. It’s to him that he’ll go for help. But even for a white expat things aren’t so simple. Access to influential middle-men and to « gombos », those bribes that everyone’s after, isn’t always enough to protect a hunted man…
Gérard Delteil was born in 1939. Following studies in the fine arts, he worked for ten years as a pavement-artist, an experience which provided him with the material for one of his best known novels, N’oubliez pas l’artiste (Fleuve Noir, 1985; Folio, 1992). A succession of odd jobs led him to journalism and then to writing. He has published more than fifty thrillers most often based on investigations (into prisons, meat trafficking, the dangers of the chemical industry) carried out in France as well as abroad.

Le Miroir de l’Inca was published by Liana Levi in 1985.