Pandora In The Congo

Albert Sánchez Piñol was born in Barcelona in 1965. He is an anthropologist, non-fiction writer and novelist writing in Catalan and Castilian Spanish. His first novel, Cold Skin, has been translated into thirty-seven languages, won the Ojo Critico Narrativa prize on its original publication in Catalan in 2003 and is being adapted for film. He is also the author of Pandora in the Congo, among other books.

* A literary dynamite charge. Independent on Sunday 20080427 * Albert Sanchez Pinol is possessed of an exceptional, fecund and devious imagination. -- David Mitchell * Wonderful. The Times 20080503 * An action-packed adventure story in the best Rider Haggard tradition and a sophisticated reflection on the imaginative power of literature. Impressive and most unusual. Independent * Going into that realm of hyperbolic fabulation where Umberto Eco has long made safari, Pandora in the Congo marks Sanchez Pinol's emergence as a significant European writer. -- Giles Foden Guardian 20080426 * A rip-roaring historical adventure. Scotland on Sunday 20080504 * An African brew with a dash of derring-do. Laced with a heady post-modern investigation into the dark art of telling tales. -- Christian House Independent 20081228 * Free of the sometimes stilted quality that dogs translated novels, this is simultaneously a gripping yarn and a genre-bending re-examination of the fiction of a bygone age. -- Alex Larman Observer 20090502 * 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 ... Pinol deftly weaves his theme of deception into all strands of the story ... 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. -- Simon Appleby Bookgeeks.co.uk

A literary dynamite charge. Independent on Sunday