Pandora in the Congo.(Brief article)(Book review)

Pandora in the Congo Albert Sanchez Pinol, trans, from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem. Canongate, $15.95 paper (448p) ISBN 978-1-84767-187-5

Pinol's second novel (after Cold Skin) is a fanciful metafiction that lampoons adventure stories while telling one with great enthusiasm. Nineteen-year-old orphan Tommy Thomson, a ghost writer struggling to make a living in WWI London, is hired to record the account of a man on trial for murdering two sons of a duke on an expedition in the Congo. The tale that unfolds draws from Stanley, Conrad and Verne, and borrows names from historical figures, often with irony …