Kehlmann Recasts 1884–85 Berlin Congo Conference as a Black Comedy

Overview

• Kehlmann’s novel Afrika was published this week on Thursday and stages the 1884–85 Berlin Congo Conference as a satirical farce centered on the fictional Austrian diplomat Gustav von Strinetzky.
• The book draws on documents given to Kehlmann by filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff and mixes real figures such as Otto von Bismarck and Henry Morton Stanley with invented scenes to dramatize backroom deals and elite incompetence.
• Kehlmann describes the work as a black comedy and his funniest novel, arguing that the conference’s absurdity demands comic treatment rather than a polemic.
• Critics are divided: some praise the novel’s sharp satire and craft, while others object to its comic tone and the deliberate marginalization of African characters given the conference’s link to Leopold II’s brutal Congo Free State.
• The book renews public attention to how literature can represent colonial violence, reminding readers that the Berlin conference legally enabled large-scale exploitation and atrocities that shaped later reckonings with European colonial crimes.