Tram 83

Fiston Mwanza Mujila

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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.