Fiston Mwanza Mujila – författare

Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated LiteratureFull of wit, music, and a rollicking cast of characters, The Villain's Dance shows Fiston Mwanza Mujila is back with a bang.Zaire. Late 90's. Mobutu's thirty-year reign is tottering. In Lubumbashi, the stubbornly homeless Sanza has fallen in with a trio of veteran street kids led by the devious Ngungi. A chance encounter with the mysterious Monsieur Guillaume seems to offer a way out . . . Meanwhile in Angola, Molakisi has joined thousands of fellow Zairians hoping to make their fortunes hunting diamonds, while Austrian Franz finds himself roped into writing the memoirs of the charismatic Tshiamuena, the "Madonna of the Cafunfo Mines." Things are drawing to a head, but at the Mambo de la Fête, they still dance the Villain's Dance from dusk till dawn.

A new poetic form from National Book Award finalist Fiston Mwanza Mujila, lauded author of novels Tram 83 and The Villain's Dance and poetry collection The River in the Belly.The Slaughterhouse of Dreams is rooted in a traditional Congolese form of praise poem, the kasala, that ties together proverbs, origin stories, fables, and riddles into a recitation accompanied by music. In Mwanza Mujila’s skilled hands, this oral tradition becomes a new multimedia form, set to the page while retaining the remarkable drama, emotion, and celebration of its performed root. In The Slaughterhouse of Dreams, multiple lyrical traditions create a hybrid world of global spaces and layers of time. With the rhythmic, frenetic energy that unites his poetry, prose, and performances, Fiston Mwanza Mujila reanimates and simultaneously deconstructs ideas of the (post)colonial environment.

Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated LiteratureZaire. Late 90's. Mobutu's thirty-year reign is tottering. In Lubumbashi, the stubbornly homeless Sanza has fallen in with a trio of veteran street kids led by the devious Ngungi. A chance encounter with the mysterious Monsieur Guillaume seems to offer a way out . . . Meanwhile in Angola, Molakisi has joined thousands of fellow Zairians hoping to make their fortunes hunting diamonds, while Austrian Franz finds himself roped into writing the memoirs of the charismatic Tshiamuena, the "Madonna of the Cafunfo Mines." Things are drawing to a head, but at the Mambo de la Fête, they still dance the Villain's Dance from dusk till dawn.

"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.**One of Flavorwire's 33 Must-Read Books for Fall 2015**Fiston Mwanza Mujila (b. 1981, Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo) is a poet, dramatist, and scholar. Tram 83 is his award-winning and much raved-about debut novel that caused a literary sensation when published in France in August 2014.

Tram 83 är en bergochdalbana till roman av den unge kongolesiske författaren Fiston Mwanza Mujila. Baren Tram 83, i det afrikanska landet Stad- Landet, är en mötesplats för lycksökare, rebeller, alkoholister, gruvarbetare, kolonialister, turister och brottslingar till en ständig bakgrundsmatta av musik. Prostituerade i alla åldrar försöker locka in män på toaletterna eller allra helst på en resa till Europa. Här återses också två gamla vänner, en lovande författare och en hårdhudad utpressare, och en europeisk förläggare däremellan. Fiston Mwanza Mujila är född 1981 i Kongo och bosatt i Graz. Under flera år har Mujila varit en omtalad dramatiker och poet på den europeiska spoken word-scenen, som i sitt skrivande lyckats förvalta en kongolesisk tradition skriven i en tydlig modern europeisk kontext, med motiv från den politiska turbulens som följde Kongos självständighet. I Tram 83 lyckas han skapa en allegori för en ny globaliserad värld där fördomar och föreställningar möter verkligheten. Världen har blivit en global by där vi alla sammanstrålar och boken skildrar såväl en afrikansk stat som reflekterar över samtiden i Europa och deras gemensamma koloniala historia. En nervös och energisk skildring av ett nyupptäckt land och språk. Det är litterär dynamit skriven med ett febrigt och förförande språk som i det närmaste kan liknas med musikalisk rytm och jazzimprovisationer.

Recaptioning Congo places the colonial Congo's photography history in new perspectives. Six writers and everyday Congolese urban voices take an African-centered look at imperial archival images and provide them with creative, contemporary and/or literary 'captions'. The book, linked to an exhibition in the photography museum FOMU Antwerp, is based upon the extensive research of the photographic history of colonial Congo (1885 – 1960), conducted by Dr. Sandrine Colard. It contains a wealth of revealing images that highlight the relationship between past and present, Africa and Europe and Belgium and Congo.Text in English, French and Dutch.