The River in the Belly - by Fiston Mwanza Mujila (Paperback)

About the Book

A moving lyric meditation on the Congo River that explores the identity, chaos, and wonder of the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as race and the detritus of colonialism. With The River in the Belly, award-winning Congolese author Fiston Mwanza Mujila seeks no less than to reinitiate the Congo River in the imaginary of European languages. Through his invention of the "solitude"--A short poetic form lending itself to searing observation and troubled humor, prone to unexpected tonal shifts and lyrical u-turns--the collection celebrates, caresses, and chastises Central Africa's great river, the world's second largest by discharge volume. Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as Soviet history, Congolese popular music, international jazz, and everyday life in European exile, Mwanza Mujila has fashioned a work that can speak to the extraordinary hopes and tragedies of post-independence Democratic Republic of the Congo while also mining the generative yet embattled subject position of the African diasporic writer in Europe longing for home. Fans of Tram 83 will discover in River the same incandescent, improvisatory verbal energy that so dazzled them in Mwanza Mujila's English-language debut. -- Amazon

Book Synopsis

A moving lyric meditation on the Congo River that explores the identity, chaos, and wonder of the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as race and the detritus of colonialism.

With The River in the Belly, award-winning Congolese author Fiston Mwanza Mujila seeks no less than to reinitiate the Congo River in the imaginary of European languages. Through his invention of the "solitude"-a short poetic form lending itself to searing observation and troubled humor, prone to unexpected tonal shifts and lyrical u-turns--the collection celebrates, caresses, and chastises Central Africa's great river, the world's second largest by discharge volume.

Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as Soviet history, Congolese popular music, international jazz, and everyday life in European exile, Mwanza Mujila has fashioned a work that can speak to the extraordinary hopes and tragedies of post-independence Democratic Republic of the Congo while also mining the generative yet embattled subject position of the African diasporic writer in Europe longing for home.

Fans of Tram 83 will discover in River the same incandescent, improvisatory verbal energy that so dazzled them in Mwanza Mujila's English-language debut.

Review Quotes

"In this raucous, electrifying what-is-it?-memoir, broken novel, poem series? or is it mainly a protest against the way that dreams can vanish like migrating birds?--Fiston Mwanza Mujila opens every stopcock that holds back his lust for life. His words rush forward in punctuated swells-- like the Congo River he so often mentions. International in his imagination, wary of spells cast by sorcerer-crocodiles and waitresses, Mwanza Mujila masters a visceral, multilingual, song-spiked account of human experience that no one will forget." -Forrest Gander, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Be With

"This is, at its source, an expat author's declaration of identity, and just as the river has formed Mr. Mujila, he has laid a claim to its legacy." --Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

"Composed of 101 numbered 'solitudes, ' Mwanza Mujila's collection is equal parts hallucination, augury, and crôocirc;nica, with fragments that appear out of order and are often enigmatically brief, grotesque, and surreally humorous." --Jay G Ying, Harriet Books

"Tram 83, the first of Fiston Mwanza Mujila's works to appear in the United States, made for a thrilling read. Now he's returned with a new collection inspired by the Congo River, giving readers an even greater sense of the range of his work." --Vol. 1 Brooklyn

"After all the riches that have been torn from his country by foreigners, asks this remarkable poet, 'will they also find a way to haul away the Congo River and use it as room freshener?' Mwanza Mujila's raw and passionate work is an authentic voice from a long-suffering land whose story we are too often accustomed to hearing only from outsiders." --Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

"Those already familiar with Tram 83 will recognize some of its precursor features in The River in the Belly, first published in 2013. The collection is full of cryptic images of sorrow and lamentation drawn from the African landscape but also fully augmented with others from a consciousness shaped by exile. The beauty of Mwanza Mujila's poetry comes from the telescoping of pain and despair into a language of unexpected juxtapositions. The resemblance with Dambudzo Marechera is not accidental, for they both attempt to hurl language into the abyss and to decipher the vague and mangled echoes that return to them in that act. A new and provocative contribution to African Literature." --Ato Quayson, Stanford University

"The poems show the Congo River running through Mwanza Mujila's veins as he contemplates mortality, (in)voluntary exile, the resource curse and the physical grandeur of the river itself.... These translations are a must-read." --Johannesburg Review of Books, Efemia Chela

"Translation is the ultimate tribute, a tributary to the river of beauty and this is so present in The River in the Belly. This is an urgent book that will outlive us all, but we can excavate it now. There is anguish. But for each wound Mwanza Mujila opens and tenderly kneads, he also sutures with a deep love. We must listen!" --Mukoma Wa Ngugi, author of Logotherapy and Black Star Nairobi

"This book ... is a masterpiece of poetic imagination and excellence. It is a melancholic meditation on the Congo River and the huge country named after it, while also expressing from the poet's new home in Austria his homesickness, solitude, and nostalgia for the good things he remembers from his country of origin such as the family home in Lubumbashi, food

About the Author

Fiston Mwanza Mujila was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1981 and lives today in Austria. His debut novel, Tram 83, published in English in 2015 by Deep Vellum, won the German International Literature Award and was longlisted for the International Man Booker and the Prix du Monde. In addition to The River in the Belly, he is the author of the poetry collections Craquelures (2011) and Soleil privé de mazout (2016), and three plays, Et les moustiques sont des fruits à pépins, Te voir dressé sur tes deux pattes ne fait que mettre de l'huile sur le feu (2015) and Zu der Zeit der Königinmutter (2018). His writing responds to political turbulence in his native country and frequently foregrounds its debt to jazz. His second novel, The Villain's Dance, was published in France in 2020 and is forthcoming in English translation from Deep Vellum.

J. Bret Maney is a literary critic and translator from the French and Spanish. He is a recipient of several awards, including the 2020 Gulf Coast Translation Prize for his translations of Fiston Mwanza Mujila's poetry and an International Latino Book Award and PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for his translation of Guillermo Cotto-Thorner's novel, Manhattan Tropics (Arte Público, 2019), which he also co-edited. He is Assistant Professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York.