The River in the Belly

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.

Fiston Mwanza Mujila's writing foregrounds its debt to jazz, responds to political turbulence in his native country and its effects on everyday life, and displays an often incandescent, improvisatory verbal energy, replete with bouts of irreverent humor and surprising tonal shifts. He is the recipient of many literary prizes, including, most recently, the Peter-Rosegger-Literaturpreis (Austria, 2018). He is the author of Tram 83, published in English in 2015 by Deep Vellum; winner of the German International Literature award and long-listed for the International Man Booker and the Prix du Monde. Mujila born in 1981 in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, and now lives in Graz, Austria.

J. Bret Maney is an assistant professor of English at Lehman College, CUNY. He earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania and has worked as a translator from the French and Spanish since 2005. Before starting graduate school, Maney founded and ran the Talking World translation agency. His translation of Manhattan Tropics has been honored by the Ezra Pound Prize for Literary Translation, a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, and a Commendation in the Gulf Coast Translation Prize.