Tram 83:
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2016
Translated by Roland Glasser
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Tram 83:
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2016
Translated by Roland Glasser
Overview
WINNER OF THE 2015 PEN TRANSLATES
WINNER OF THE 2015 ETISALAT PRIZE FOR LITERATURE
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE
A pulsating novel of urban abandonment in the Congo.
In an unnamed African city in secession, profit-seekers of all languages and nationalities mix. They have only one desire: to make a fortune by exploiting the mineral wealth of the land. Two friends — Lucien, a writer with literary ambitions, home from abroad, and his childhood friend Requiem, who dreams of taking over the seedy underworld of their hometown — gather in the most notorious nightclub in town: the Tram 83. Around them gravitate gangsters and young girls, soldiers and stowaways, profit-seeking tourists and federal agents of a nonexistent State.
Tram 83 plunges the reader into a modern African gold rush as cynical as it is comic and colourfully exotic. A daring feat of narrative imagination and linguistic creativity, Tram 83 uses the rhythms of jazz to weave a tale of human relationships in a world that has become a global village.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Paperback
- 210mm x 135mm
- 224 pages
- 9781925106947
- AUD$24.99
- 26 August 2015
Categories
Awards
- Winner of the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Literature
- Longlisted for the 2016 The Man Booker International Prize
- Longlisted for the 2016 Best Translated Book Awards
- Shortlisted for the 2017 Internationaler Literaturpreise – Haus der Kulturen der Welt
- Winner of the 2014 Grand Prix SGDL du Premier Roman
- Shortlisted for the 2014 Prix Wepler-Fondation La Poste
- Winner of the 2015 PEN Translates
- Winner of the null Golden Medal in Literature of the VI Jeux de la Francophonie in Beirut
Praise
‘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.’
‘[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.’
