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The Villain's Dance
Fiston Mwanza Mujila; Translated by Roland Glasser
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R379
Discovery Miles 3 790
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Following the international success of his debut novel Tram 83,
Fiston Mwanza Mujila is back with his highly anticipated second
novel, which follows a remarkable series of characters during the
Mobutu regime. The Democratic Republic of Congo, otherwise known as
Congo-Kinshasa or DRCongo, has had a series of names since its
founding. The name of Zaire best corresponds to the experience of
the novel’s characters. The years of Mobutu’s regime were
filled with utopias, dreams, fantasies and other uncontrolled
desires for social redemption, the quest for easy enrichment and
the desecration of places of power. Among these events: Zairians’
immigration to Angola during the civil war boycotting the borders
inherited from colonization, as if the country did not have its own
diamonds, and the occupation of public places by children from
outside. The author creates the atmosphere of the time through a
roundup of characters: the diviner Tshiamuena, also known as
Madonna of the Cafunfo mines, prides herself of being God with
whoever is willing to listen to her. Franz Baumgartner, an
apprentice writer originally from Austria and rumba lover, goes
around the bars in search of material for his novel. Sanza, Le
Blanc and other street children share information to the
intelligence services when they are not living off begging and
robbery. Djibril, taxi driver, only lives for reggae music. As soon
as night falls, each character dances and plays his own role in a
country mined by dictatorship.
A moving lyric meditation on the Congo River that explores the
identity, chaos, and wonder of the Democratic Republic of Congo as
well as race and the detritus of colonialism. With The River in the
Belly, award-winning Congolese author Fiston Mwanza Mujila seeks no
less than to reinitiate the Congo River in the imaginary of
European languages. Through his invention of the “solitude”—a
short poetic form lending itself to searing observation and
troubled humor, prone to unexpected tonal shifts and lyrical
u-turns—the collection celebrates, caresses, and chastises
Central Africa’s great river, the world’s second largest by
discharge volume. Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as
Soviet history, Congolese popular music, international jazz, and
everyday life in European exile, Mwanza Mujila has fashioned a work
that can speak to the extraordinary hopes and tragedies of
post-independence Democratic Republic of the Congo while also
mining the generative yet embattled subject position of the African
diasporic writer in Europe longing for home. Fans of Tram 83 will
discover in River the same incandescent, improvisatory verbal
energy that so dazzled them in Mwanza Mujila’s English-language
debut.
Following the US's bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the
scenes of chaos at Kabul Airport, we could be forgiven for thinking
we're experiencing an 'end of empire' moment, that the US is
entering a new, less belligerent era in its foreign policy, and
that its tenure as self-appointed 'global policeman' is coming to
an end. Before we get our hopes up though, it's wise to remember
exactly what this policeman has done, for the world, and ask
whether it's likely to change its behaviour after any one setback.
After 75 years of war, occupation, and political interference -
installing dictators, undermining local political movements,
torturing enemies, and assisting in the arrest of opposition
leaders (from OEcalan to Mandela) - the US military-industrial
complex doesn't seem to know how to stop. This anthology explores
the human cost of these many interventions onto foreign soil, with
stories by writers from that soil - covering everything from
torture in Abu Ghraib, to coups and counterrevolutionary wars in
Latin America, to all-out invasions in the Middle and Far East.
Alongside testimonies from expert historians and ground-breaking
journalists, these stories present a history that too many of us in
the West simply pretend never happened. This new anthology
re-examines this history with stories that explore the human cost
of these interventions on foreign soil, by writers from that soil.
From nuclear testing in the Pacific, to human testing of CIA
torture tactics, from coups in Latin America, to all-out invasions
in the Middle and Far East; the atrocities that follow are often
dismissed in history books as inevitable in the 'fog of war'. By
presenting them from indigenous, grassroots perspectives,
accompanied by afterwords by the historians that consulted on them,
this book attempts to bring some clarity back to that history.
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Tram 83 (Paperback)
Fiston Mwanza Mujila; Translated by Roland Glasser; Foreword by Alain Mabanckou
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R411
R343
Discovery Miles 3 430
Save R68 (17%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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"An exuberantly dark first novel." NPR's Fresh Air w/ Terry Gross
**Nominated for the Man Booker International Prize 2016** **Winner
of the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Debut African Fiction** Two friends,
one a budding writer home from abroad, the other an ambitious
racketeer, meet in the most notorious nightclub Tram 83 in a
war-torn city-state in secession, surrounded by profit-seekers of
all languages and nationalities. Tram 83 plunges the reader into
the modern African gold rush as cynical as it is comic and
colorfully exotic, using jazz rhythms to weave a tale of human
relationships in a world that has become a global village. **One of
Flavorwire's 33 Must-Read Books for Fall 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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