Tram 83

Tram 83 is set in an unnamed African city-state torn by civil war, where people of every language and nationality gather with one aim: to get rich from the land's mineral wealth. At the heart of it all is Tram 83, the most notorious nightclub in town.

Two friends meet there. One is a young writer just back from Europe, the other a childhood friend who dreams of taking over the city's seedy underworld. Together they are drawn into a dizzying, lurid world of gangsters and crooks, poets and sex workers, soldiers and spies, tourists and stowaways.

In this debut, Fiston Mwanza Mujila treats a modern African gold rush with equal parts cynicism and comedy. The prose borrows the rhythms of jazz and plays boldly with language, producing a darkly exuberant story about relationships, greed and excess in a world that has become a global village. The novel was longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.