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.

"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.