The shadow of things to come - Kossi Efoui

In an unnamed African nation, the people are subject to a state of
perpetual warfare and to an Orwellian abuse of language that strips from
language its meaning and renders life senseless. And in a bare room lit
only by moonlight, a young man hides, waiting for the mysterious
crocodile-men to come and help him escape from the violent tyranny of
the state. While he waits, he tells his story.This is Kossi Efoui's catastrophic and carnivalesque dreamscape, the dark setting of The Shadow of Things to Come.
Here, men and women are taken in the night, spirited away from their
families and sent to plantation penal colonies to be worked to the edge
of madness. When they return, they are empty shells, their lost time
referred to as the \u201cTime of Annexation.\u201d But though his parents were
taken, our protagonist survived, first in the care of a quirky
benefactress named Mama Maize, then under the wing of the state itself,
as a student at one of its elite schools. When he meets a bookseller
named Axis Kemal, however, he has found a surrogate father, an eccentric
and wise man who can bring him out of the meaningless confusion and
tell him the truth about the society he lives in.Through
his characters, Efoui speaks out against atrocity and the abuse of
power, but more, he writes against political rhetoric and the
destruction of meaning by government. This novel is a love letter to
language and, in Chris Turner's dazzling translation, it becomes a
stunning introduction for English-language readers to an exciting new
talent.