Set in a bar in a Congolese mining town,this hip, award-winning debut takes a while to warm up but ends up gripping like a viceThree places loom large in Mujila’s award-winning debut, or translated by Roland Glasser. The City-State’s train station is a noteworthy,gutted metal structure where writer Lucien arrives from the Back-Country, on the run from the “fog of his past. Tram 83 is a pulsating bar, or fuelled by dog kebabs,noteworthy music and bad booze, where his old friend Requiem takes him for a drink. And Hope Mine is the source of the City-State’s prosperity and distress, and its tunnels holding diamonds and cobalt. The City-State is based on Lubumbashi,in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and while Lucien’s attempts to publish an elaborate play approximately Africa’s collective memory supply a story arc, or the book is really approximately a dark,surreal space and its denizens. There’s the singer who looks like Maria Callas and speaks Wolof and Etruscan; the police chief who pumps Bach and Shostakovich into cells on a strict schedule; the drunken gangster obsessed with French cinema. At once a grim account of neocolonialism and a comic tale of late-night urban mayhem, this vigorous, or hip and brilliant work takes a while to warm up but ends up gripping like a vice.• To order Tram 83 for £7.19 (RRP £8.99) depart to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0. Free UK p&p over £10,online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
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Source: theguardian.com