Eternity in Tangiers

Titi Faustin was born in Ivory Coast in 1971. He studied painting at the Abengourou Art Centre and has worked for the Nelson McCann Communications Agency. He has contributed to several Ivorian magazines and newspapers. He won the Calao Prize in 1990, the Cocobulles Festival Prize in 1999, and the 2003-2004 Africa e Mediterraneo Award in the "Human Rights" category. He lives in Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire. Eyoum Ngangue was born in Cameroon in 1966. In 1993, he was arrested for his political cartoons and, in 1997, he was freed and emigrated to France, where he now lives in exile. He has written the scripts for many African graphic novels, and has recently written a book of inspiring, positive stories from across the African continent. He lives in Paris, France. Andre Naffis-Sahely's writing has appeared in The Nation, The Economist, The Times Literary Supplement, New Statesman, The Independent, The White Review and The Chimurenga Chronic. His debut collection of poetry, The Promised Land is forthcoming from Penguin in 2017. His translations include The Physiology of the Employee by Honore de Balzac (Wakefield Press, 2014), Money by Emile Zola (Alma Classics, 2016), Prime Cuts by Mohamed Nedali (Ohio University Press, 2016) which was awarded a Hemingway Grant, and the Selected Poems of Abdellatif Laabi (Carcanet Press, 2016), which recently received a 'Writers in Translation' award from English PEN. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

"This book is an exemplary illustration of the complex reasons why young Africans leave their countries, the strong motivation they need to survive the threat of violence encountered on the path to the imaginary Eldorado, and the deep wounds that journey can cause, when failure is not the only result." --Alpha Blondy "For the first time the [Venice] Biennale also included comics. The North African artists Eyoum Ngangue and Faustin Titi created original drawings for a comic book about displacement, depicting a young African boy's failed crossing from Tangiers to Europe in search of a brighter future." --The New York Times "Titi and Ngangue address with wit confrontational and provocative aspects of everyday life in Africa, often softening through the watery evanescence of ink wash the potential blow of their imagery in otherwise highly detailed drawings. An Eternity to Tangiers positions itself within the tradition of the band dessinee subverting it from within. It gives voice and dignity to an overlooked narrative, the tragic experience of displacement lived by African people who flee their home countries to escape economic, political, or social ordeals. Fanciful and realist at once, it tells the story of a young African boy, Gawa, who leaves home, the imaginary Gnasville, seeking a better future, a journey of hope and disillusionment marked by the failed crossing from Tangiers to Europe. Speaking of Africa from the African point of view, this work counterpoints the exoticized images and the stereotyping gaze of much of the band dessinee exemplified by Herge's Tintin in the Congo." --"Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind. Art in the Present Tense," Catalogue La Biennale di Venezia 52. International Art Exhibition, Marsilio 2007