Fiston Mwanza Mujila – författare

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.

Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature

Full 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.

WINNER OF THE 2015 PEN TRANSLATESWINNER OF THE 2015 ETISALAT PRIZE FOR LITERATURELONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE

A pulsating novel of urban abandonment in the Congo.

In an unnamed African city in secession, profit-seekers of all languages and nationalities mix. They have only one desire: to make a fortune by exploiting the mineral wealth of the land. Two friends — Lucien, a writer with literary ambitions, home from abroad, and his childhood friend Requiem, who dreams of taking over the seedy underworld of their hometown — gather in the most notorious nightclub in town: the Tram 83. Around them gravitate gangsters and young girls, soldiers and stowaways, profit-seeking tourists and federal agents of a nonexistent State.

Tram 83 plunges the reader into a modern African gold rush as cynical as it is comic and colourfully exotic. A daring feat of narrative imagination and linguistic creativity, Tram 83 uses the rhythms of jazz to weave a tale of human relationships in a world that has become a global village.

PRAISE FOR FISTON MWANZA MUJILA

‘One of the most exciting discoveries of the rentrée … There is some Hieronymus Bosch in this frenetic, flamboyant, closed-door city slicker. An insolent, globe-trotting Hieronymus Bosch, one who would have read Gabriel García Márquez and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.’ Le Monde

‘This ambitious fugue from Congolese writer Fiston Mwanza Mujila delves into an African nation riven by civil war, disease, poverty, and endemic corruption … It’s bustling, strange experimental fiction in which the chaos of daily life leaks like blood from the iron fist of violence and profit.’ The Sydney Morning Herald

I Zaire rasar både inbördeskrig och gruvor. Över den från kolonialtiden ärvda gränsen till Angola flyttas såväl diamanter som de zairier som gräver fram dem i gruvorna, beskyddade av den gudomliga Tshiamuena. I Lubumbashi målas de officiella byggnaderna om i olika färger beroende på vem som har makten, trots att gatorna egentligen tillhör de hemlösa barnen som Sanza och Le Blanc.

I Lubumbashi ligger också baren Festens mambo där det dansas rumba till Skurkens dans. I myllret möts lycksökare, kolonisatörer, gruvarbetare, hemlig polis och den österrikiska författaren Franz Baumgartner med en väska fylld av ord. Drömmarna rinner bort med ölen och musiken ger rytm till våldet och det politiska spelet i en malström av galenskap.

I Skurkens dans skildrar Fiston Mwanza Mujila människorna som gör vad de kan för att överleva i en omgivning präglad av konflikter, diktatorers maktbegär och kolonialismens arv.   

I Zaire rasar både inbördeskrig och gruvor. Över den från kolonialtiden ärvda gränsen till Angola flyttas såväl diamanter som de zairier som gräver fram dem i gruvorna, beskyddade av den gudomliga Tshiamuena. I Lubumbashi målas de officiella byggnaderna om i olika färger beroende på vem som har makten, trots att gatorna egentligen tillhör de hemlösa barnen som Sanza och Le Blanc.

I Lubumbashi ligger också baren Festens mambo där det dansas rumba till Skurkens dans. I myllret möts lycksökare, kolonisatörer, gruvarbetare, hemlig polis och den österrikiska författaren Franz Baumgartner med en väska fylld av ord. Drömmarna rinner bort med ölen och musiken ger rytm till våldet och det politiska spelet i en malström av galenskap. 

I Skurkens dans skildrar Fiston Mwanza Mujila människorna som gör vad de kan för att överleva i en omgivning präglad av konflikter, diktatorers maktbegär och kolonialismens arv.