It’s often very tempting when reading books for review to try and describe them to the reader as ‘a cross between Writer A and Writer Z’, or ‘the bastard offspring or Writer B and Writer X’, especially when it’s a new author or the title is hard to categorise – but normally (I hope), I stop myself. While comparisons will always help the reader if they are well-chosen, ‘cross between’ lines are usually a sign of a lazy reviewer who can’t find the words to properly describe what is is they’ve read. This is a shame, because every now and again it’s a device that would come in really useful. I’m not going to do it. But if I was (purely for the sake of argument), I would probably describe Pandora in the Congo as coming over like a cross between H. Rider Haggard and Angela Carter, which is a pretty mind-blowing combination. But obviously, I’m not actually doing that.

Superficially, Pandora in the Congo starts out feeling like a early 20th century adventure story, set, like so many tales of the time (think King Solomon’s Mines) in Africa during that period of massive colonial land-grabbing , exploitation and violence, otherwise known as the Scramble for Africa. Londoner Tommy Thomson is a young writer who quickly finds himself taken advantage of as a ghost writer for Dr Luther Flag, who specialises in churning out 80-page adventure novels full of every African cliche you can imagine – Pygmies, Zulus, elephants, lost tribes, chisel-jawed white heroes and dumb natives. This gives him a degree of ‘expertise’ on Africa that lands him a more unusual job – he is hired by a lawyer to tell the story of Marcus Garvey.

Garvey was the lone survivor of a mining expedition to the Congo gone wrong – recruited by two equally odious aristocratic brothers as valet and chef, he stumbled out of the jungle the lone survivor of the expedition, in possession of two massive diamonds. Unsurprisingly given the class divide between Garvey and his now missing employers, he finds himself charged with their murder. That’s where Thomson comes in – over the course of many years, as the first world war rages, it’s his job to visit Garvey in prison and capture his story for a novel that is intended by Garvey’s lawyer to win his client’s freedom in the court of public opinion.

The story that emerges over the course of Thomson’s many visits begins routinely enough but becomes utterly fantastical, mind-blowing, incredible. And the book that emerges eventually becomes a bestseller – Tommy Thomson has his wish – and it won’t surprise you that he finds authorial fame is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Pandora in the Congo is a wonderful book on so many levels – the story within a story of Garvey’s time in Africa, as recounted by Thomson, is thrilling and compulsive. The story of how Thomson is played by various forces that enter his life is fascinating – he feels great sympathy for Garvey, and cannot help but get caught up in the tale he is telling, but he is also an innocent abroad, ripe to be taken advantage of. The climax of the tale, when Thomson eventually learns the true version of events is well realised,  and Pinol deftly weaves his theme of deception into all strands of the story, ranging from the willing suspension of disbelief required to read the pulp produced by Dr Luther Flag, to the involuntary acceptance of Garvey’s account from Thomson, who incorporates the tale in to the entire fabric of his reality.

From the teeming streets of London, to the dark heart of Africa, via the very bowels of the earth, this is a cracking story on so many levels – and one of which any master of magical realism would be just as proud as a teller of tales of derring do. Highly recommended.

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