The Slaughterhouse of Dreams: Kasala for My Kaku - Paperback

by Fiston Mwanza Mujila (Author), J. Bret Maney (Translator), Antoine Wauters (Interviewer)

A new poetic form from National Book Award finalist Fiston Mwanza Mujila, lauded author of novels Tram 83 and The Villain's Dance and poetry collection The River in the Belly.

The Slaughterhouse of Dreams is rooted in a traditional Congolese form of praise poem, the kasala, that ties together proverbs, origin stories, fables, and riddles into a recitation accompanied by music. In Mwanza Mujila's skilled hands, this oral tradition becomes a new multimedia form, set to the page while retaining the remarkable drama, emotion, and celebration of its performed root. In The Slaughterhouse of Dreams, multiple lyrical traditions create a hybrid world of global spaces and layers of time. With the rhythmic, frenetic energy that unites his poetry, prose, and performances, Fiston Mwanza Mujila reanimates and simultaneously deconstructs ideas of the (post)colonial environment.

Author Biography

Fiston Mwanza Mujila was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1981 and lives today in Austria. His debut novel, Tram 83, published in English in 2015 by Deep Vellum, won the Etisalat Prize for Literature and the German International Literature Award and was longlisted for both the International Booker Prize and the Prix littéraire du Monde. His second novel, The Villain's Dance (2024), also available from Deep Vellum, won the Prix Les Afriques and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature. In addition to these novels translated by Roland Glasser, his poetry collection The River in the Belly (trans. J. Bret Maney, 2021) is also available in English from Deep Vellum. Dubbed "a new and provocative contribution to African Literature," it was a finalist for the Luschei Prize for African Poetry and the Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation.

J. Bret Maney is a literary critic and translator from the French and Spanish. He is a recipient of several awards, including the 2020 Gulf Coast Translation Prize for his translations of Fiston Mwanza Mujila's poetry and an International Latino Book Award and PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for his translation of Guillermo Cotto-Thorner's novel, Manhattan Tropics (Arte Público, 2019), which he also coedited. He is Associate Professor of English and Digital Humanities at Lehman College and The Graduate Center, CUNY.