Fiston Mujila - Tram 83

Malingeau reacted forcefully to the Negus’s barking: “Don’t speak to me in that tone! I was born in Geneva, Requiem. I was born in Geneva, you know!”

Lucien meanwhile, hanging back, stopped to write despite the characteristic congestion of this station whose metal structure …

All paths lead to Tram 83. No roads lead to the Northern Station without passing in front of the place. They felt some nostalgia as they walked past the Tram. The ambience was at its peak. Outside, people sat, stood, drank, ate, sang as one voice renditions of the Diva, danced, yelled, kissed, enticed the clients, hailed the baby-chicks, cursed, brawled, and demanded jazz in order to be on the same footing as the first-rate tourists.

“Do you have the time?”

When they began to cross the rails, stepping from one to the next, the music reached them, a delicious conversation between saxophone, drums, and trumpet. The saxophone rose, rose, rose, then faded into blissful silence. The drums then filled the empty space before petering out. Sax and drums then climbed together, before the drums broke off, giving free rein to the sax, which soliloquized like a dying dog. The saxophone passed away in turn with an almost cerebral hiccup. It was at this precise moment that the trumpet made its entrance, covering a tune known throughout the City-State. The saxophone then ascended from its ashes and set to nibbling away at the space conquered by the trumpet. In two beats, the drums joined this predators’ ball, which echoed through the station with its unfinished metal structure, gutted by artillery, train tracks, and locomotives that called to mind the railroad built by Stanley, cassava fields, cut-rate hotels, greasy spoons, bordellos, Pentecostal churches, bakeries, and noise engineered by men of all generations and nationalities combined.

FISTON MWANZA MUJILA was born in 1981 in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, where he went to a Catholic school before studying Literature and Human Sciences at Lubumbashi University. He now lives in Graz, Austria, and is pursuing a PhD in Romance Languages. His writing has been awarded with numerous prizes, including the Gold Medal at the 6th Jeux de la Francophonie in Beirut as well as the Best Text for Theater (“Preis für das beste Stück,” State Theater, Mainz) in 2010.

His poems, prose works, and plays are reactions to the political turbulence that has come in the wake of the independence of the Congo and its effect on day-to-day life. As he describes in one of his poems, his texts describe a “geography of hunger”: hunger for peace, freedom, and bread. Tram 83 , written in French and published in August 2014 as a lead title of the rentrée littéraire by Éditions Métailié, is his first novel. It has been shortlisted and won numerous literary prizes in France, Austria, England, and the United States.

ROLAND GLASSER translates literary and genre fiction from French, as well as art, travel, and assorted nonfiction. He studied theater, cinema, and art history in the UK and France, and has worked extensively in the performing arts, chiefly as a lighting designer. He is a French Voices and PEN Translates award winner and serves on the Committee of the UK Translators Association. Having lived in Paris for many years, he is currently based in London.

Roland Glasser would like to thank Looren Translation House for their provision of a residency (www.looren.net).

ALAIN MABANCKOU is a Franco-Congolese author and Professor of French and Francophone Studies at UCLA. His novels include Blue White Red (1998), African Psycho (2003), Broken Glass (2005), Memoirs of a Porcupine (2006), Black Bazaar (2009), and The Lights of Pointe-Noire (2013). He is the recipient of numerous literary prizes, such as the Grand Prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire, Prix Renaudot, Prix Georges Brassens , and the Grand Prix de Littérature Henri Gal from the Académie Française for his life’s work. He was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize International in 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.

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