In Tram 83, Fiston Mwanza Mujila plunges the reader into the atmosphere of a gold rush as cynical as it is comic and colourfully exotic
Fiston Mwanza Mujila
Born in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo in 1981, Fiston Mwanza Mujila lives in Graz, Austria
His writing has been awarded with numerous prizes, including the Golden Medal in the sixth Games of the Francophony in Beirut, as well as the Best Text for Theater (Preizfür das beste Stück, State Theater, Mainz). He writes his short stories, novels, poems and essays in French, his mother tongue, and in German, his adopted language. As a child he dreamed of becoming a saxophonist playing jazz. ‘But there was no saxophone, so the jazz rhythm is now added to my poems. I write like a jazz musician.’ He writes about the chaos, the civil wars and the 32-year dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, which have been undermining his home country since its independence in 1960 from Belgium. Tram 83 is his first novel.