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Two friends, one a budding writer home from Europe, the other an ambitious racketeer, meet in the only nightclub, the 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. Fiston Mwanza Mujila (b. 1981, Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo) is a poet, dramatist, and scholar. Tram 83 is his award-winning and raved-about debut novel that caused a literary sensation when published in France in August 2014.
In a city in secession, land tourists of all nationalities seek their fortune by exploiting the mineral wealth of the country. They mine during the day in and, as soon as night falls, they abandon themselves in Tram 83, the city's only nightclub. Lucien, a writer, fleeing censorship, finds refuge there with his friend, Requiem, a thief. Tram 83 plunges the reader into the atmosphere of a gold rush as cynical as it is comic and colourfully exotic. It's an observation of human relationships in a world that has become a global village.
WINNER OF THE 2015 PEN TRANSLATES WINNER OF THE 2015 ETISALAT PRIZE FOR LITERATURE LONGLISTED 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-se...
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 divers...
After four years of Trump, America seems set to return to political normality. But for much of the rest of the world, that normality is a horror story: 75 years of US-led invasions, CIA-sponsored coups, election interference, stay-behind networks, rendition, and weapons testing... all in the name of Pax America, the world’s police. If you are not an ally of the US, in this ‘normality’, your country can find its democratic processes undermined and its economic wellbeing conditioned upon returning to the fold. If you’re not strategically important to the US, you can find yourself its dumping ground. This new anthology re-examines this history with stories that explore the human cost of...
Marco Just Quiles offers new perspectives on how domestic and external factors interact to shape variations in local state capacity. Using Bolivia as a case, he applies quantitative and qualitative methods to decode the nexus between global interdependencies, subnational bargaining processes, and diverging configurations of public service provision at the local level. Relying in part on newly compiled indicators, the author presents the ways in which shifting distributional coalitions between regional elites, central governments and their connections with international markets in different periods of the last century have produced the contemporary fragmentation of stateness in Bolivia.
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 83plunges the reader into a modern African gold rush as cynical as it is comic a...
In Pointe-Noire, in the small neighbourhood of Voungou, on the family plot where young Michel lives with Maman Pauline and Papa Roger, life goes on. But Michel's everyday cares - lost grocery money, the whims of his parents' moods, their neighbours' squabbling, his endless daydreaming - are soon swept away by the wind of history. In March 1977, just before the arrival of the short rainy season, Comrade President Marien Ngouabi is brutally murdered in Brazzaville, and not even naïve Michel can remain untouched. Starting as a tender, wry portrait of an ordinary Congolese family, Alain Mabanckou quickly expands the scope of his story into a powerful examination of colonialism, decolonization and dead ends of the African continent. At a stroke Michel learns the realities of life - and how much must change for everything to stay the same.
A tale of love, loss, identity, and belonging, No Place to Call Home tells the story of a family who fled to the United Kingdom from their native Congo to escape the political violence under the dictator, Le Maréchal. The young son Jean starts at a new school and struggles to fit in. An unlikely friendship gets him into a string of sticky situations, eventually leading to a suspension. At home, his parents pressure him to focus on school and get his act together, to behave more like his star-student little sister. As the family tries to integrate in and navigate modern British society while holding on to their roots and culture, they meet Tonton, a womanizer who loves alcohol and parties. Much to Jean's father's dismay, after losing his job, Tonton moves in with them. He introduces the family—via his church where colorful characters congregate—to a familiar community of fellow country-people, making them feel slightly less alone. The family begins to settle, but their current situation unravels and a threat to their future appears, while the fear of uncertainty remains.
A Black teacher searches for himself across the United States in this “emotive, brave” (Daily Mail, London) story for all of us who have fantasized about escaping our daily lives and starting over. Michael Kabongo is a British Congolese teacher living in London and living the dream: he’s beloved by his students, popular with his coworkers, and adored by his proud mother who emigrated from the Congo to the UK in search of a better life. But when he suffers a devastating loss, his life is thrown into a tailspin. As he struggles to find a way forward, memories of his fathers’ violent death, the weight of refugeehood, and an increasing sense of dread threaten everything he’s worked so ...