By MERIN MCDIVITT
Daily Arts Writer
A slim, colorful paperback,
written
in
French
by
a
Congolese transplant learning
German in Austria, didn’t look
like a breakout hit when it was
published in 2014. But that, of
course, is just what playwright
and
poet
Fiston
Mwanza
Mujila’s debut novel, “Tram
83,” became. The book’s fast-
paced prose and incantatory,
almost
violent
bursts
of
language were a revelation
to the Francophone literary
scene, and the awards began
piling up within the year:
winner of the Etisalat Prize for
first African novel, shortlisted
for the Prix du Monde, and now
the novel’s English translation
has been longlisted for the 2016
Man Booker Prize, one of the
most prestigious awards in the
English language.
The Michigan Daily caught
up with Mujila, a native of
Lubumbashi in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, in an email
exchange while he enjoyed a
brief respite from international
touring in his new home of
Graz, Austria. We were assisted
by Mujila’s eminently skillful
translator, Roland Glasser, who
also translated “Tram 83” into
the exquisitely worded English
language edition.
The novel follows the uneasy
friendship of Lucien, a troubled
writer escaping violence in
the countryside, and Requiem,
a gleeful ne’er-do-well who
boozes and womanizes by day,
and schemes and steals by
night. Lucien has arrived by
rusting colonial train in the
capital of an unnamed central-
African country, teeming with
Chinese investors and African
workers, Portuguese musicians
and “baby chicks and single
mamas” from no man’s land.
Mujila describes all visitors
to the city and its popular
nightclub,
“Tram
83,”
as
“tourists” with a cynical wink.
“The tourists belong to every
nationality. People come from
all over the world in search of
the stone (minerals),” he wrote.
“There are not only Westerners
but also thousands of African
tourists to be found in the
nooks and crannies of the City-
State. I wanted to reappraise
globalization by bringing in all
these different populations.”
Yet one European visitor,
a
Swiss
publisher
named
Malingeau, is a source not only
of exploitation, but also of the
African exuberance and joie de
vivre that brings the city to life.
“A character in a novel
can slip out of the author’s
control,” Mujila wrote. “The
publisher is one such example.
He considers himself African
and finds pleasure in the
carnival-like drinking sprees
and hedonism of this bar called
Tram 83. In his own opinion,
African literature should be a
joyous thing, since life is also
to be found in rumba, jazz, and
the other delights of Tram 83.”
All of the characters live or
die by the caprices of the mine
— the unstable mineral deposit
outside town, surrounded by
armed guards and constantly
changing hands — though it
promises great wealth for few
and unfathomable chaos for all
who live there. The looming
presence of the mine dominates
the novel, casting its ominous
shadow over the characters in
this improbable place.
“The phenomenon of the
mine tackled in the novel is
timeless and universal,” Mujila
wrote.
But it also speaks to the
desperation that characterizes
central Africa today, wracked
as it is by conflict over minerals
and resources.
Mujila shines with
debut novel ‘Tram 83’
PONTAS AGENCY
Fiston Mwanza Mujila is a Congolese novelist currently living in Austria.
“I wanted to provide some
food for thought — the novel
contains several portions —
about what it means to be
young in a country in a state
of war or under a dictatorship.
In the Congo, over half the
population are young people in
a country ravaged by decades of
dictatorship and war. But there
is in this youth — even when
it is obliged to go down into
the mines or other black holes
of existence to earn a crust —
an extraordinary resilience, a
desire for freedom and a call for
a new world,” Mujila wrote.
The book’s greatest virtue,
and perhaps the key to its
international success, is the
throbbing
musicality
of
its
language. The prose is visceral,
as sensuous and vivid as a live
performance — not surprising,
considering both the surfeit of
talented Congolese musicians,
from
rumberos
to
rappers,
and
Mujila’s
own
musical
background.
This
connected
the
novel
to
international
traditions,
particularly
jazz,
and to the author’s own musical
heritage in the DRC.
“Singing contributes to the
recognition of an individual
within
a
group,
to
the
legitimization of their exploits
or
their
actions,”
Mujila
explained. “The Luba people
of the Congo practiced kasala,
an oratorical art in which an
individual is praised for their
merits, or to crown important
events at court, be they happy
or sad. This oratorical form was
common in ancestral Africa.”
Not much happens in the
novel, so to speak, and you can
feel it in the plodding, rhythmic
languor
of
the
subtropical
air. Lucien is stuck, waiting
for something to happen — a
visa, a publication, a war. It’s
a
universal
feeling,
known
to writers everywhere, and
Lucien fluctuates between the
tantalizing misadventures of
his swindler friend and his own
earnest scribblings. It is not
Lucien himself, but the fiendish
vitality of his surroundings that
drives the novel forward.
The success of “Tram 83”
has affected not just awards
and fanfare, but a series of
global translations into Hebrew,
Greek,
Catalan,
Dutch
and
Swedish, to name just a few. The
book’s afterlife will now simmer
on at bookstores in Tel Aviv and
bedside tables in Barcelona.
As
Mujila’s
African
expatriate
contemporaries,
from
Nigeria’s
Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie to Zimbabwe’s
NoViolet Bulawayo, proliferate
in the West, he will continue to
bring his distinctive, musical
voice into the fray. While the
media
often
celebrates
the
so-called “African Renaissance”
of literature as though it runs
into a concrete wall at the edges
of the vast continent, what
defines Mujila’s prose is not its
provincialism, but its diversity,
its shape-shifting nature and
forcefully unfocused lens on the
world.
“The child is not born from
a tree. He comes from his
mother’s belly,” Mujila wrote.
“In
Lubumbashi,
the
town
of my birth, and throughout
the Congo I’m sure, a child is
often identified in relation to
his parents. ‘Whose child is
that?’ people often ask. I feel
no unease at being considered
an African or Congolese author,
even if I don’t write in the name
of a nationality, a people, a city,
a country or a continent.”
In many ways, as is true
for all writers, Mujila’s youth
in a vital, turbulent African
capital is the pounding heart
behind his work. But “Tram 83”
does not define the DRC, and
Lubumbashi fails to encapsulate
the essence of Mujila, to close in
around him like a hermetically
sealed chamber. He writes as an
African and as a European, an
expatriate and a native son —
perhaps, simply, as a citizen of
the world.
ARTIST IN PROFILE
SINGLE REVIEW
Until this year, I’d never
heard a Sampha solo track, but
not because the British R&B/
electronic
artist hasn’t
made any.
Although he
released EPs
Sundnaza and
Dual, in 2010
and 2013,
respectively,
I’d
unknowingly limited myself
to his features on “Too Much”
and “The Motion” off Drake’s
Nothing Was The Same, “Saint
Pablo,” the latest addition to
Kanye’s The Life of Pablo and
most recently, “Alabama” off
Frank Ocean’s visual album,
Endless.
But a feature spot “Blood
on Me” is not. It’s heavy
and enveloping, employing
an eccentric yet somehow
organic piano and cowbell
combination. It’s hectic and
raw as the artist literally
pants his way through the
first verse. It’s energetic and
angry, leaving the listener
unsure whether to samba or
scream.
Sampha’s expectedly
stunning vocals have never
been accompanied by this
kind of unexpectedly urgent
production. And now that I
know what he can do on his
own, I’m only more excited for
the release of his debut album,
Process.
- RACHEL KERR
B+
Blood
on Me
Sampha
YOUNG TURKS
THE D’ART BOARD
Tim Kaine Was Here
Ann Arbor got to meet
America’s new Papi.
Kid Cudi Tweets “I am the culture”
I mean, if the culture is
summer of 2009.
Hillary hates Pepe Memes
Is the war on memes the
new war on drugs?
Mac Miller & Ariana Grande Are Dating
#LoveWins.
Rob + Chyna Premieres
Miss Kris bought a
charcuterie platter for the
occasion.
4B — Thursday, September 15, 2016
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com