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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.
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