In the Net

Hawad is Amajagh (Tuareg for “outsiders”). He is a poet and painter of the Sahara. Hawad writes in his own language, Tamajaght, which he transcribes in tifinagh, the Tuareg alphabet. The drama and resistance of the Tuareg people, of all people threatened with extinction, punctuates Hawad’s fictional universe. Christopher Wise is a professor of English at Western Washington University. For nearly three decades he has translated the work of Sahelian authors. HÉlÈne Claudot-Hawad is a French anthropologist and director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research. She is the author of numerous publications on the Tuareg world.

“In this first book-length English translation of poetry by Tuareg writer-artist Hawad, language is weapon and pulsating sound, visual art, and physical gesture. Completed during the height of the Azawad revolt in Mali in 2013, In the Net also serves as a resistance to erasure. For Hawad poetry is anchor, promise, and presence; it is a mode of survivance that has the potential to keep the Tuareg people from oblivion. Thanks to the excellent forewords by the translators, who contextualize both the original Tuareg text and its metamorphoses into French and then English, these poems retain their explosive quality without sacrificing the sociohistorical context from which they were born. For whom is this book? Students of African studies, translators, artists of all kinds, those searching for homeland, and those seeking the shelter that can be found, for a time, on the page.”-Kristiana Kahakauwila, author of This Is Paradise  “In spare, fearless language, Hawad mourns the Tuareg’s loss and chronicles the death march that followed Azawad’s fall. In the Net is a forgotten story told in a tongue whose use alone is a political act, an epic made all the more poignant because its resting place, its shining Ithaca, is always already lost. Beautifully translated by HÉlÈne Claudot-Hawad and Christopher Wise, illustrated with the author’s Tifanagh-character ‘furigraphy,’ the book is the first full-length translation of this major poet into English. ‘Essential’ is an overused word in book endorsements, but in this case, it is brilliantly, searingly, the only one possible.”-Susanne Paola Antonetta, author of The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here