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A review by scribepub
Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila
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.
Cameron Woodhead, Sydney Morning Herald
[E]xuberant … Mujila, a playwright and a poet, has produced a formally engaging book that mimics both the structures of jazz and the sense of overhearing conversation in a bar … The whole book is charged with snarled, involving language; you always feel you're hunting for thoughtful treasures.
The Saturday Paper
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
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
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
A formidable demonstration of the power of literature.
Télérama
A hallucinating and hallucinogenic Congolese fresco where everything is about music. An incandescent novel.
France Inter
A novel of a mind-blowing and poetic beauty.
Point Magazine
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
At 33, Fiston Mwanza Mujila pens a very promising first novel.
Jeune Afrique
A real discovery among the novels of the rentrée. Not to be missed.
Alain Mabanckou, Jeune Afrique
The style is really quite something, a rich, rhythmic language, hallucinogenic and dreamlike in places. A feast!
Translator Roland Glasser
Invigorating and narcotic, Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s writing multiplies the language creativity by polishing a painting of an imaginary Africa.
Muriel Mingau, Le Populaire du Centre
Tram 83 is a high-speed journey, a tragic, burlesque, melancholic and melodic story.
Christine Ferniot, Lire
Tram 83 is a rhapsody. A crazy saxophone solo rising silently with the echo of the chorus.
Emile Rabaté, Libération
Attention, comet! We dive into this Tram 83 like we dive into a piece by Coltrane, of which we never come out of.
Laurent Bosque, Rolling Stone
Fiston Mwanza invents the “locomotion-literature”, the “theatre-story” genre, and turns his debut novel into a manifest for convulsive poetic prose, half-way between Aimé Césaire and Boris Vian.
Chloé Thibaud, Le Nouvel Observateur
Here’s a debut novel that anticipates a promising literary career.
Caya Makhélé, Notre Afrik
From Graz, in Austria, where he lives, the Congolese author Fiston Mwanza Mujila reinvents in his first novel the joyful and terrible brothels of his home country.
Muriel Steinmetz, L’Humanité
Tram 83 is part Satantango, part Fitzcarraldo, and part Blood Meridian. A dark, funny, and true accomplishment.
Chad Felix, Word Bookstores
Tram 83 isn’t for the faint of heart, but rather, it’s for those that have a sense of humor, an interest in seedy underbellies, and a willingness to, at times, feel a little lost in the haze of biblical imagery, flippant debauchery, free sex, and anarchy. Ezra Pound would be proud; Mujila “made it new”.
Josh Cook, Foreword Reviews
Talk about verve — and vivre: Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83 introduces a rousing, remarkable new voice to this world, surely in its original French, most definitely in Roland Glasser’s superb translation. This book has drive and force and movement, it has hops and chops. It has voices!
Rick Simonson, Elliot Bay Book Company
I was totally into the wild formal thug-haunted adventurousness of Tram 83.
Forrest Gander, Author of The Trace
Blade Runner in Africa with a John Coltrane soundtrack.
Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore
Through observation and conversation, the reader is exposed to the economic boom and cultural bust of contemporary Africa in search of what the future holds for human relationships and survival in a place where tradition and personal histories are quickly being swept under the rug by global forces. Mujila captures chaos in a hypnotic free-jazz rhythm that is so rarely found in novels of this scope.
Kevin Elliott, 57th Street Books
Tram 83 reads like a modern, twisted The Great Gatsby… An unaffected view of humanity that is at once repulsive, hilarious, and oddly uplifting … The novel, like the nightclub, is eccentric and somewhat disturbing, yet inclusive and universally appealing.
Caitlin Thomas, Three Percent
Cameron Woodhead, Sydney Morning Herald
[E]xuberant … Mujila, a playwright and a poet, has produced a formally engaging book that mimics both the structures of jazz and the sense of overhearing conversation in a bar … The whole book is charged with snarled, involving language; you always feel you're hunting for thoughtful treasures.
The Saturday Paper
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
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
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
A formidable demonstration of the power of literature.
Télérama
A hallucinating and hallucinogenic Congolese fresco where everything is about music. An incandescent novel.
France Inter
A novel of a mind-blowing and poetic beauty.
Point Magazine
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
At 33, Fiston Mwanza Mujila pens a very promising first novel.
Jeune Afrique
A real discovery among the novels of the rentrée. Not to be missed.
Alain Mabanckou, Jeune Afrique
The style is really quite something, a rich, rhythmic language, hallucinogenic and dreamlike in places. A feast!
Translator Roland Glasser
Invigorating and narcotic, Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s writing multiplies the language creativity by polishing a painting of an imaginary Africa.
Muriel Mingau, Le Populaire du Centre
Tram 83 is a high-speed journey, a tragic, burlesque, melancholic and melodic story.
Christine Ferniot, Lire
Tram 83 is a rhapsody. A crazy saxophone solo rising silently with the echo of the chorus.
Emile Rabaté, Libération
Attention, comet! We dive into this Tram 83 like we dive into a piece by Coltrane, of which we never come out of.
Laurent Bosque, Rolling Stone
Fiston Mwanza invents the “locomotion-literature”, the “theatre-story” genre, and turns his debut novel into a manifest for convulsive poetic prose, half-way between Aimé Césaire and Boris Vian.
Chloé Thibaud, Le Nouvel Observateur
Here’s a debut novel that anticipates a promising literary career.
Caya Makhélé, Notre Afrik
From Graz, in Austria, where he lives, the Congolese author Fiston Mwanza Mujila reinvents in his first novel the joyful and terrible brothels of his home country.
Muriel Steinmetz, L’Humanité
Tram 83 is part Satantango, part Fitzcarraldo, and part Blood Meridian. A dark, funny, and true accomplishment.
Chad Felix, Word Bookstores
Tram 83 isn’t for the faint of heart, but rather, it’s for those that have a sense of humor, an interest in seedy underbellies, and a willingness to, at times, feel a little lost in the haze of biblical imagery, flippant debauchery, free sex, and anarchy. Ezra Pound would be proud; Mujila “made it new”.
Josh Cook, Foreword Reviews
Talk about verve — and vivre: Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83 introduces a rousing, remarkable new voice to this world, surely in its original French, most definitely in Roland Glasser’s superb translation. This book has drive and force and movement, it has hops and chops. It has voices!
Rick Simonson, Elliot Bay Book Company
I was totally into the wild formal thug-haunted adventurousness of Tram 83.
Forrest Gander, Author of The Trace
Blade Runner in Africa with a John Coltrane soundtrack.
Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore
Through observation and conversation, the reader is exposed to the economic boom and cultural bust of contemporary Africa in search of what the future holds for human relationships and survival in a place where tradition and personal histories are quickly being swept under the rug by global forces. Mujila captures chaos in a hypnotic free-jazz rhythm that is so rarely found in novels of this scope.
Kevin Elliott, 57th Street Books
Tram 83 reads like a modern, twisted The Great Gatsby… An unaffected view of humanity that is at once repulsive, hilarious, and oddly uplifting … The novel, like the nightclub, is eccentric and somewhat disturbing, yet inclusive and universally appealing.
Caitlin Thomas, Three Percent