Tram 83 - by Fiston Mwanza Mujila (Paperback)

About the Book

Exceptional debut Congolese novel uses jazz rhythm to evoke the frenzied exploitation of land and people in contemporary Africa

Book Synopsis

"An exuberantly dark first novel." - NPR's Fresh Air w/ Terry Gross

**Nominated for the Man Booker International Prize 2016**

**Winner of the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Debut African Fiction**

Two friends, one a budding writer home from abroad, the other an ambitious racketeer, meet in the most notorious nightclub-Tram 83-in a war-torn city-state in secession, surrounded by profit-seekers of all languages and nationalities. Tram 83 plunges the reader into the modern African gold rush as cynical as it is comic and colorfully exotic, using jazz rhythms to weave a tale of human relationships in a world that has become a global village.

Review Quotes

"A high-velocity debut . . . The writing has the pulsing, staccato rhythms of Beat poetry and Roland Glasser has exuberantly harnessed that energy in his translation from the French." --Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

"In this visceral, fast-paced debut novel, acclaimed Congolese poet Mujila examines life in a central African state plagued by instability. . . . Rapid and poetic, Mujila depicts a province where 'every day is a pitched battle.' . . . Mujila succeeds in exploring themes of globalization and exploitation in a kinetic, engaging work." --Publishers Weekly

"Mujila has turned out a multiaward-winning debut that's decidedly cool and juicy. . . . The writing, which has all the edgy darkness of the best street lit, sometimes mimics the bar's background jazz in its syncopation and the occasional quick-burst, broken-sentence, run-on format, with the bar regulars feeling like a Greek chorus." -- Library Journal (Starred Review)

"If his portrait of Congo makes it appear socially and politically hopeless, what's hopeful is the spirit of his writing, which crackles and leaps with energy. Rather than moralize, he transfigures harsh reality with a bounding, inventive, bebop-style prose, translated from the French with light-footed skill by Roland Glasser." -- John Powers, NPR's Fresh Air w/ Terry Gross

"Stylistically quirky and unorthodox fiction from Africa...Tram 83 is the locus of those driven by ambition, desire, greed, or pleasure--and in this underworld we meet quite a cast of characters." --Kirkus Reviews

"Deeply allusive . . . most original about Tram 83 is its conscious application of a music no longer of the avant-garde - a normalized music - to sing of modern Africa. Jazz is a language his foreign readers can understand, and this is what implicates them as yet another gang of tourists in the bar of Tram 83." -- Michael LaPointe, The Times Literary Supplement (TLS)

"Roland Glasser's wonderful translation, roiling and musical, delivers Mujila's profane and teeming portrait of a semi-fictional Congolese city with all the feverish sweep of the modern African gold rush it depicts. Somehow epic, intimate, and morally complex at the same time." -- Jonny Diamond, The Literary Hub (Best Books of 2015)

"Energetically written Congolese satire that goes dark and funny in its depiction of a city-state around a mine where everything and everybody is for sale, neoliberalism on full-blast." -- Jace Clayton (DJ Rupture), Dwarf + Giant

The expressive and elegiac prose makes the seediness so palpable, the poverty so tangible, the darkness and debauchery so intense, yet it does not reach the point of despair." -- The Deccan Herald

"Mujila employs the logic of poetry - to evoke a febrile eternal present. It's bustling, strange experimental fiction in which the chaos of daily life leaks like blood from the iron fist of violence and profit." -- Cameron Woodhead, Sydney Morning Herald (Pick of the Week)

"With echoes of Flannery O'Connor, Ralph Ellison, and Joseph Conrad, Mujila's language alchemizes epic poetry from violence, despair and distraction. He bebops in broken time with words and structure, improvising and free-associating." --Michelle Newby, The Rumpus

"A frenetic writing style, like that of a jazz musician, gives this Africa-set novel an enthusiastic, adventurous energy . . . Tram 83 isn't for the faint of heart, but rather, it's for those that have a sense of humor, an interest in seedy underbellies, and a willingness to, at times, feel a little lost in the haze of biblical imagery, flippant debauchery, free sex, and anarchy. Ezra Pound would be proud; M

About the Author

Fiston Mwanza Mujila was born in 1981 in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, where he went to a catholic school before studying Literature and Human Sciences at Lubumbashi University. He now lives in Graz, Austria and is pursuing a PHD in Romance Languages. His writing has been awarded with numerous prizes, including the Gold Medal at the 6th Jeux de la Francophonie in Beirut as well as the Best Text for Theater ("Preis für das beste Stück", State Theater, Mainz) in 2010. His poems, prose works and plays are reactions to the political turbulence that has come in the wake of the independence of the Congo and its effect on day-to-day life. His texts describe, as he says in one of his poems, a "geography of hunger" hunger for peace, freedom, and bread. His texts have been published in the original French and in translation in many journals and anthologies in several European countries, and he has been performing at readings and festivals since 2002. Tram 83, written in French and published in August 2014 as a lead title of the "rentrée litteraire" by Éditions Métailié, is his first novel, and has been shortlisted and won numerous literary prizes in France and Austria, a French Voices Prize from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the US, and has already been translated into eight languages.

Roland Glasser, a French to English translator, editor, and writer, studied French and Theatre Studies at Aberystwyth University (Wales), Film and Dramatic Arts at the University of Caen (Normandy) and Advanced Theatre Practice at The Central School of Speech and Drama (London). Glasser spent a decade living in Paris, where he developed a successful career in translation, literary editing, and lighting design, while gaining extensive experience as a performer, dramaturg, producer, writer and photographer. Currently based in London, Glasser works with a wide range of international clients and collaborators in translation and theater.