This energetic, musical and often funny story of good and evil, power and justice, features a charismatic cast of characters.

Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature Full of wit, music, and a rollicking cast of characters, The Villain's Dance shows Fiston Mwanza Mujila is back with a bang.

Zaire. Late 90's. Mobutu's thirty-year reign is tottering. In Lubumbashi, the stubbornly homeless Sanza has fallen in with a trio of veteran street kids led by the devious Ngungi. A chance encounter with the mysterious Monsieur Guillaume seems to offer a way out...

Meanwhile in Angola, Molakisi has joined thousands of fellow Zairians hoping to make their fortunes hunting diamonds, while Austrian Franz finds himself roped into writing the memoirs of the charismatic Tshiamuena, the "Madonna of the Cafunfo Mines." Things are drawing to a head, but at the Mambo de la Fête, they still dance the Villain's Dance from dusk till dawn.

BIO

Born in Lubumbashi (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Fiston Mwanza Mujila studied literature and humanities there. In 2007, Mwanza Mujila left the Congo and subsequently lived in Belgium, Germany, France, and, after being invited to Graz as the “Stadtschreiber” (writer-in-residence) in 2009/2010, in Austria. Fiston Mwanza Mujila is pursuing a PhD in Romance Studies at the University of Graz, where he teaches African literature. He writes poetry and short stories as well as for the theater. His texts have been staged in France, Congo, Germany and Austria. The play “Zur Zeit der Königinmutter” (2018) was performed at the Akademietheater (Vienna) and the Deutsches Theater Berlin.

In his texts, Fiston Mwanza Mujila reflects on the chaos, the civil wars, the decades of Mobutu’s dictatorship that have (did) shape his homeland since its independence from Belgium in 1960. The author repeatedly circles around the themes of loneliness and exile; in the bilingual long poem “Le Fleuve dans le Ventre/ The River in the Belly,” they structure the text as formative elements. Here, a first-person character tells of child soldiers, illness, disfigurement, and again and again of the Congo River, which stands for life and identity in their threatened state. The “I” carries this river “in its belly” in order to spew it out from time to time, just as it spews out the dirt of history and a spoiled meal,” says Ilma Rakusa in the NZZ. About the Congo River, Fiston Mwanza Mujila himself says: “This watercourse inspired me so much that I felt obliged to dedicate a collection of poems to it […] There is an ambiguity in this river […]. For some, it symbolizes the greatness of Africa and could feed the whole continent. But it strikes, does nothing. When conflicts break out, it sets about carrying away the bodies.”

[P]  Deep Vellum Books  /  March 12, 2024

0.9" H x 8.1" L x 5.2" W (0.7 lbs) 272 pages