Harare Review of Books

272 pages.

Expected publication date: March 12, 2024 (Deep Vellum Publishing)

Fiction.

Certainly for my part of the world, Zaire loomed large in the imagination: a place of excess, rhumba, and untold riches in the centre of Africa. And Mobutu Sese Seko, always Mobutu, in his leopard skin hat, always larger than life and always in the news. Mujila’s story is set in those heady days, when—not surprisingly—life for ordinary Zaireans was not that of our imagination. When civil war broke out in neighbouring Angola, Zaireans flocked to harvest—and smuggle—abundant diamonds from the wild and ungoverned north; mostly not becoming rich themselves, but that’s of course the illusion that drives any mineral rush.

At the centre of this narrative is the Madonna, a mysterious, mythical and possibly omniscient figure who mothers all the miners who cross her path, and who has a million tales about her past. Other narrators include young men who start out living on the streets of Lubumbashi, and who take fantastical life journeys with varying levels of success. There’s also the mysterious man who catches them up in his net; to my relief, he only turns out to be a shadowy political figure, a mere mortal in the end. And then there’s a hanger-on, an Austrian writer who falls in love with the mystery, intrigue and exoticness of that time and place.

This is a heady novel, potent in its vivid descriptions of a lost time, and its characters will live in your head for a long while. The novel also does the tremendous work of telling the story of the people of a place that’s rarely visualised in Anglophone Africa except as a place of wars and coups. Are there redemptive arcs for the characters? Only somewhat, just like in life. I would have liked to read much more about the mysterious Madonna, Tshiamuena, though; perhaps she’ll appear in a future novel, even one of her own, to explain all of those past lives (including … Japan?!)

Thank you to Edelweiss and to Deep Vellum Publishing for access.

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