Amnesty: Dancing with Cannibals, Book 1

Amnesty —Dancing with Cannibals, Book 1, Dicho Ilunga

Amnesty—Dancing with Cannibals, Book 1 is the first volume of Dicho Ilunga’s 600-page novel. Amnesty will be followed by the publication of Mastery —Book 2 and Ancestors —Book 3.


“Everything was strange, but everything was for the taking.” In Dicho Ilunga’s epic historical novel, Dancing with Cannibals, the Congo is as dangerous for the predatory Belgians as the Belgians are for the tribes that live in the lush, treasure-filled region. Young, impulsive Jean Turken plays a prank and is thrust into prison in Brussels by a heartless justice system. In 1898 the Belgian king, Leopold II, realizes that he is falling behind the other European powers in seizing the vast resources of central Africa. To make up for this slow beginning, King Leopold empties the prisons of Belgium into the Congo, forcing the inmates to serve as colonial agents. Given limitless military support and the power of life and death over the native people, an army of ruthless criminals sets out to fulfill the ambitions of a relentless despot. With one year left of his sentence, Jean Turken is reluctantly transported to Africa to make his fortune; the alternative is life in prison. Jean Turken soon finds that in the Congo all is not as it seems and that he must quickly learn to survive in a merciless world.

Dicho Ilunga’s Dancing with Cannibals brings an African perspective to telling the story of the most horrifying chapter in the European colonization of the African continent: “Under Léopold II’s administration, the Congo Free State was subject to a terror regime, including atrocities such as mass killings and maimings which were used to subjugate the indigenous tribes of the Congo region and to procure slave labor” (Religious Tolerance.org). In the course of extracting the natural wealth of the Congo, the use of the native population for forced labor is estimated to have led to from two million to fifteen million deaths.
Never before has there been a novel about the genocide in the Congo Free State written in English by an African writer. Dancing with Cannibals would seem to have been influenced by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (which is also set in the Congo during the Belgian regime) and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, but Dicho Ilunga has not read either of those books. Ilunga’s writing is largely absent a European context. Ilunga describes his literary training as coming from the Zairian writers that he read in school and from two novels by Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho who Ilunga says has an African style.

The source of Dicho Ilunga’s considerable literary power is his conviction that he should write what he knows. Dancing with Cannibals takes its origin in Ilunga’s acquaintance with individuals who have personally confronted cannibalism, a practice that not only exists in central Africa but that may be increasing due to the chaotic conditions that currently prevail there. Writing with historical scope, mature compassion, and deep emotional perception, Ilunga has devised a suspenseful story of travel, adventure, action, and love. Faced with intractable personal and moral struggles, Jean Turken desperately tries to hold on to his integrity in a world where nothing is outlawed and every taboo must be confronted in the heart and in the soul.

Dicho Ilunga is the author of several accomplished, unpublished novels. Born in Zaire, Dicho Ilunga fled to Rwanda as a political refugee only to become embroiled in the Rwandan genocide through his marriage to a Tutsi woman. Dicho Ilunga now lives in South Africa, where again he is a political refugee. At this time he works in a warehouse to support himself. Ilunga has no time to write, and he has no laptop. He hopes that sales of Dancing with Cannibals will allow him to bring more of his works into publication.