In a personal, poetic, and political memoir of the death and times of the Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, the Haitian Raoul Peck examines his adopted country and his own coming of age set against the fitful coming out of colonialism. When the Belgians finally heard, "It's over," Lumumba was there, a symbol of self-determination that shone too brightly, and thus too briefly. Lumumba is a disturbing look at what happened and an essayistic musing on what might have been; a look at Africa as it was and as Europeans made it out to be. Peck searches the faces in Congolese photographs for what they are hiding, and the faces of Europeans today for what they won't see. "The prophet," he says, "returns to tickle the feet of the guilty." (JB)