Berado, the self-styled Prince of Zamunda, is an aspiring young writer from the Republic of Congo, who has come to Paris to join his friend Benoît, a busker who plies his wits in the Château Rouge neighborhood. There Berado finds nothing in their lives straightforward, except that Benoît knows how to charm—women above all. But when Benoît takes up with a white Bretonne woman, the fallout reaches all the way to Mama Mushama, the fierce proprietress of Congo’s Manioc Pays restaurant—and suddenly everything is a tangled mess.

To get his story straight, Berado tracks down Ramsès, receptionist and bartender at the Salam Hotel in the 11th arrondissement, and begins to talk. But his tale keeps slipping away from him—interrupted, contradicted, dissolving at the edges into something between dream and waking. Maybe it’s the tea.

In the tradition of the Thousand and One Nights, Booker Prize finalist Alain Mabanckou conjures a world of African exile in Paris that is ribald, tender, and shot through with sly wit—peopled with rogues you can’t help rooting for and absurdities you can’t help recognizing. Mabanckou is celebrated for his “colorful supporting characters” (San Francisco Chronicle), whose stories are told with “black humor” (The New York Times Book Review), ringing with a “beautiful poetry” (The Wall Street Journal). Called “funny and sardonic” (Le Parisien), this is Mabanckou at his most irresistible.