) to define difficult words as he tells his story, creating a mix of dark humor and brutal reality.

If you’ve typed the phrase into a search engine, you already know the frustration. You’ve likely downloaded one of the muddy, unsearchable, OCR-scrambled copies floating around the internet—files where page numbers are crooked, French phrases bleed into English translations, and half the footnotes are missing.

: Kourouma critiques how religion can be manipulated to justify exploitation and war crimes.

– Look for: