Have you heard about the heated conversation taking place about Congolese author Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s award-winning novel Tram 83? Brittle Paper has got you covered.

Tram 83 was published in French in 2015. The English translation won the Etisalat Prize for Literature last year. The novel has been translated into eight languages and was nominated for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.

US-based Nigerian critic Ikhide Ikheloa wrote a long article criticising the book for, among other things, poverty porn and misogyny.

Soon afterwards, novelist and Etisalat judge Zukiswa Wanner wrote a Facebook post on Ikheloa’s piece, and earned a strong reaction from people such as Caine Prize Director Lizzy Attree, the book’s translator Roland Glasser, Zimbabwean writer and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga, Ugandan writer, filmmaker and activist Dilman Dila and Kenyan co-founder of Jalada Africa Richard Oduor Oduku.

Brittle Paper sums up the debate in a lengthy but vital post:

This conversation raises a lot of questions. Does the depiction of misogyny mean that the one who depicts it the way it is has become misogynist? Does capturing the reality of poverty on a continent translate to poverty porn because the continent has become synonymous with poverty in global narratives? If not, where then is the line between honest depiction and poverty porn? Or is this one more example of how, as Ainehi Edoro argued in 2014, it is only Africans who worry about poverty porn? Is it about incomplete readings as Bwesigye implied—about the need to examine literature through more than a few niche ideological or practical lens, through feminism and class politics and publishing complexities and the peculiarity of translation?

Click on the link above for the full story.

Categories Africa Fiction International

Tags Brittle Paper Democratic Republic of the Congo Etisalat Prize for Literature Fiston Mwanza Mujila Ikhide Ikheloa Tram 83 Zukiswa Wanner