The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

Tram 83
by Fiston Mwanza Mujila
translated from the French by Roland Glasser
Democratic Republic of Congo


Available in the U.K. from Jacaranda Books


Available in the U.S. from Deep Vellum Press

In a war-torn African city-state tourists of all languages and nationalities converge with students, ex-pats and locals. They have only one desire: to make a fortune by exploiting the mineral wealth of the country, both mineral and human. 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 iniquities.

Lucien, a professional writer, fleeing the exactions and the censorship, of the Back-Country, 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.

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. Virtually every scene is punctuated by the come-ons of the prostitutes — too lewd to quote here — that serve almost like a Greek chorus repeatedly saying, “Live for now, live for now, live for now.”
~John Powers at NPR Books

Playful, even with all its dark edges, Tram 83 is a different kind of modern urban novel — City-State so alien and removed (it is very much a city apart) that much of this feels closer (especially in Mwanza Mujila’s presentation) to dystopic science fiction than the usual gritty realism.
~M.A. Orthofer in The Complete Review

Odd one - not quite sure how to feel about it. The language is wonderful, but it works better as a prose poem than as a novel. The plot is so insubstantial it would have almost been better off without.

Worthy of the longlist but not shortlist material for me given some of the other novels on the list.