Tram 83
In an African city in secession land tourists of all languages and nationalities. They have only one desire: to make a fortune by exploiting the mineral wealth of the country. They work during the day in mining concession and, as soon as night falls, they go out to get drunk, dance, eat and abandon themselves in Tram 83, the only night-club of the city, the den of all the outlaws.
Lucien, a professional writer, fleeing the exactions and the censorship, finds refuge in the city thanks to Requiem, a friend. Requiem lives mainly on theft and on swindle while Lucien only thinks of writing and living honestly. Around them gravitate gangsters and young girls, retired or runaway men, profit-seeking tourists and federal agents of a non-existent State.
Tram 83 plunges the reader into the atmosphere of a gold rush as cynical as, it is comic and colorfully exotic. It's an observation of human relationships in a world that has become a global village, an African-rhapsody novel hammered by rhythms of jazz.
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Original Language
FRENCH | Ed. Metailié
Translation Rights
ARABIC | Al Kotobkhan
CATALAN | Edicions del Periscopi
DANISH | Jensen & Dalgaard
DUTCH | De Bezige Bij
ENGLISH (US) | Deep Vellum Publishing
ENGLISH (UK & Ireland) | Jacaranda Books **rights reverted
ENGLISH (ANZ & South East Asia) | Scribe Publishing **rights reverted
ENGLISH (Indian Subcontinent) | Speaking Tiger **rights reverted
GERMAN | Zsolnay
GERMAN (ppbk) | Unionsverlag
GREEK | Kastaniotis
HEBREW | Pardes Publishing
ITALIAN | Edizione Nottetempo
LITHUANIAN | Kitos Knygos
SLOVENIAN | Modrijan
SPANISH | Pepitas de Calabaza
SWEDISH | Rámus Forlaget
Prizes
2018 Rosegger Literary Prize
Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2016
Winner of the Elisalat Prize 2015
Shortlisted for the French Voices Award
Shortlisted for the Prix du Monde (Le Monde des Livres), 2014
Best French debut finalist of 2014 according to LIRE
Reviews
"The writing has the pulsing, staccato rhythms of Beat poetry … Tram 83 is an antidote to the gloomy nature of most African novels. It doesn’t glamorize the ugliness, yet it’s alive to the thrill and abandonment of living for the moment and ‘satisfying the pleasures of the underbelly." Wall Street Journal
"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. Fiston evokes the textures of the city in all its deliriousness, blowing marvelous riffs on everything from the sleaziness of foreign visitors to the differing shapes of streetwalkers' buttocks to the way the poor patrons of Tram 83 like jazz, because it's so classy." NPR's Fresh Air
"A hallucinating and hallucinogenic Congolese fresco where everything is about music. An incandescent novel.” France Inter
"«A formidable demonstration of the power of literature." Télérama
"A modern, twisted The Great Gatsby." Three Percent
"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. Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mujila has turned out a multiaward-winning debut that’s decidedly cool and juicy." Library Journal
"Incandescent and visionary… young prodigy of the African letters… a supremely colorful work, overflowing with energy and irony… A linguistic firework that feeds a personal style full of echoes of jazz, rumba, street poetry and rap." Fabio Gambario, La Reppublica
"A debut novel with a vertiginous rhythm. Picaresque poetry turned into music by a mix of slam and a series of loops and turns as bewitching as a sustained jazz melody." Sean James Rose, Livres Hebdo
"A novel of a mind-blowing and poetic beauty." Point Magazine
"Blade Runner in Africa with a John Coltrane soundtrack." Brazos Bookstore
"Like Thomas Pynchon or David Foster Wallace – or free jazz, for that matter – Mujila rewards patience .... Ezra Pound would be proud; Mujila “made it new”." Josh Cook, Foreword Reviews
