CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French – serie

Selected essays from the rich and complex collection of Edouard Glissant, one of the most prominent writers and intellectuals of the Caribbean, examine the psychological, sociological, and philosophical implications of cultural dependency.Edouard Glissant's Caribbean Discourse is an unflaggingly ambitious attempt to read the Caribbean and the New World experience, not as a response to fixed, univocal meaning imposed by the past, but as an infinitely varied, dauntingly inexhaustible text.

The complete poems of Leopold Sedar Senghor, possibly Africa's most famous poet, are offered in translation for the first time in this bilingual edition. The book, representing the culmination of a lifetime of work, includes ""Lost Poems"", a collection of Senghor's earliest work. Senghor's poetry contrasts the lushness and wonder of Africa's past with the alienation and loss associated with assimilation into European culture. Co-founder of the negritude literary movement, Senghor is concerned that ways be provided for African and European cultures to enrich each other while preserving their own cultural identities. His poetry, alive with sensual imagery, reclaims his ancestral heritage and celebrates African culture. He writes with an awareness of his readers, preparing them to receive his culture and its values. With emotional power, he draws the reader deep into his world. In his introduction, translator Melvin Dixon places Senghor's writing in a historical perspective by relating it to his political inolvement. Dixon also elaborates on the ways in which the poems chronicle Senghor's own development as an intellectual, particularly on his struggles with issues of self and cultural identity. Dixon's translation preserves the integrity of Senghor's work by retaining, in the original, words and expressions unique to Senghor's African French, expressions whose meaning would be compromised in translation.

Nedjma is a masterpiece of North African writing. Its intricate plot involves four men in love with the beautiful woman whose name serves as the title of the novel. Nedjma is the central figure of this disorienting novel, but more than the unfortunate wife of a man she does not love, more than the unwilling cause of rivalry among many suitors, Nedjma is the symbol of Algeria. Kateb has crafted a novel that is the saga of the founding ancestors of Algeria through the conquest of Numidia by the Romans, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, and French colonial conquest. Nedjma is symbolic of the rich and sometimes bloody past of Algeria, of its passions, of its tenderness; it is the epic story of a human quest for freedom and happiness.

Leopold Sedar Senghor was not only president of the Republic of Senegal from 1960 to 1981, he is also one of Africa's most famous poets. A co-founder of the Negritude cultural movement, he is recognized by many as one of the most significant figures in African literature. This is a bilingual edition of Senghor's complete poems. His poetry, alive with sensual imagery, contrasts the lushness and wonder of Africa's past with the alienation and loss associated with assimilation into European culture. Translator Melvin Dixon places Senghor's writing in historical perspective by relating it to both his political involvement and his intellectual development.

The cloth edition of Assia Djebar's Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, her first work to be published in English, was named by the American Literary Translators Association as an ALTA Outstanding Translation of the Year. Now available in paperback, this collection of three long stories, three short ones, and a theoretical postface by one of North Africa's leading writers depicts the plight of urban Algerian women who have thrown off the shackles of colonialism only to face a postcolonial regime that denies and subjugates them even as it celebrates the liberation of men. Denounced in Algeria for its political criticism, Djebar's book quickly sold out its first printing of 15,000 copies in France and was hugely popular in Italy. Her stylistically innovative, lyrical stories address the cloistering of women, the implications of reticence, the connection of language to oppression, and the impact of war on both women and men. The Afterword by Clarisse Zimra includes an illuminating interview with Djebar.

An English translation of ""Compere General Soleil"", published in France in 1955. This novel depicts the nightmarish journey of a labourer and his wife from the slums of Port-au-Prince to the cane fields of the Dominican Republic, and personifies the sun as friend and leader of the workers.

These two novels, written by West African painter, writer, playwright and director Werewere Liking, spare nothing in their satirical portraits of the patriarchal view of African society as they experiment radically with the novel form.

Characterized as ""the African Voltaire,"" Ahmadou Kourouma garnered enormous critical and popular praise upon the 1998 release of his third novel, En attendant le vote des betes sauvages. Kourouma received the Prix des Tropiques, among other prestigious prizes, for that book, and the French edition went on to sell 100,000 copies. His most recent novel, Allah n'est pas oblige, is the winner of this year's Prix Renaudot. Carrol F. Coates's translation, Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals, introduces English-language audiences to Kourouma's irreverent view of the machinations of the African dictators who played the West against the East during the thirty years of the cold war. Profiting from western financial support, the dictators built palaces, shrines, and hunting preserves for their personal gratification as they paraded about with numerous mistresses, marabouts, and advisers. In the style of a sere who sings the praises of the thirty-year career of the master hunter and president Koyaga (a fictionalized Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo), readers are treated to a brief overview of the French colonization of the ""Naked people,"" hunters in West African mountain country, followed by the account of Koyaga's assumption of power through treachery, assassination, and sorcery. In an interview Kourouma noted the Togolese assumption that if the people did not turn out to vote for Eyadema in the democratic elections following the cold war, the wild animals would come out of the forest to vote for him. The novel ends with an apocalyptic stampede, although the animals are probably fleeing a bush conflagration rather than running to the polls.

Widely acclaimed when first published in French in 1994, Mongo Beti's tenth novel, L'histoire du fou, continues the author's humorous yet fierce criticism of the colonial system in Africa and its legacy of governmental corruption. Translated here as The Story of the Madman, the novel gives the English-speaking world Beti's comic satire of the fictional Chief Zoaeteleu and his favorite sons Zoaetoa and Narcisse. In a modern fable that Beti uses to illustrate the problems of a people's distintegrating values in a postcolonial state, Chief Zoaeteleu, a puppet under two dictatorial regimes, is swept into the frontline of politics, where his fortunes unravel. Along with his caustic portrayal of failed government - clearly a reflection of his native Cameroon - Beti's realism provides an intriguing view of the struggle for balance between traditional life and imminent change in African culture.

In his third novel, Jacques Stephen Alexis brings his characteristically vivid scenes, political consciousness, and powerful characters to the dramatic age-old question of whether a prostitute can leave ""the life"" to find her own identity and true love. La Nina Estrellita is pursuing her trade against the colorful backdrop of Holy Week 1948 in Port-au-Prince. Amid the rowdy street festivals and pious celebrations of the liturgical season, she notices a fellow Cuban exile, El Caucho, a ship mechanic and union organizer, hanging around the Sensation Bar, and she begins to explore her attraction to him. In the Flicker of an Eyelid, first published in French as L'espace d'un cillement in 1959, appears here in English for the first time in a graceful, expert translation by the veteran critic Carrol F. Coates and the award-winning Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat. Alexis offers a highly sympathetic look into the daily lives and tribulations of the Haitian people through the eyes of La Nina and the humane, searching worker El Caucho. The racism of the U.S. military, the selfish and profit-oriented machinations of Haitian politicians, the oppression of workers by the Cuban dictator Batista, the exploitation of women, and the particularly noteworthy links between Haiti and Cuba all form the figurative backdrop for a novel driven by unforgettable characters.

One of the first literary works to portray Djiboutians from their own point of view, ""The Land without Shadows"" is a collection of seventeen short stories. The author, Abdourahman A. Waberi, one of a handful of francophone writers of fiction to have emerged in the twentieth century from the ""confetti-sized state"" of Djibouti, has already won international recognition and prizes in African literature for his stories and novels. Because his writing is linked to immigration and exile, his native Djibouti occupies center stage in his work. Drawing on the Somali/Djiboutian oral tradition to weave pieces of legend, proverbs, music, poetry, and history together with references to writers as diverse as Soyinka, Shakespeare, Djebar, Baudelaire, Cesaire, Waugh, Senghor, and Beckett, Waberi succeeds in bringing his country into a context that reaches well beyond the Horn of Africa. Originally published in France in 1994 as ""Le Pays sans ombre"", this newly translated collection presents stories about the precolonial and colonial past of Djibouti alongside those set in the postcolonial era. With irony and humor, these short stories portray madmen, poets, artists, French colonists, pseudointellectuals, young women, aspiring politicians, famished refugees, khat chewers, nomads struggling to survive in Djibouti's ruthless natural environment, or tramps living (and dying) in Balbala, the shantytown that stretches to the south of the capital. Waberi's complex web of allusions locates his tales at an intersection between history and ethnography, politics and literature. While written in a narrative prose, these stories nevertheless call on an indigenous literary tradition that elevates poetry to the highest standing. By juxtaposing the present with the past, the individual with the collective, the colonized with the colonizer, the local with the global, ""The Land without Shadows"" composes an image of Djibouti that is at times both kaleidoscopic and cinematographic. Here the art of the short story offers partial but brilliantly illuminated scenes of the Djiboutian urban and rural landscape, its people, and its history.

One of the first literary works to portray Djiboutians from their own point of view, ""The Land without Shadows"" is a collection of seventeen short stories. The author, Abdourahman A. Waberi, one of a handful of francophone writers of fiction to have emerged in the twentieth century from the ""confetti-sized state"" of Djibouti, has already won international recognition and prizes in African literature for his stories and novels. Because his writing is linked to immigration and exile, his native Djibouti occupies center stage in his work. Drawing on the Somali/Djiboutian oral tradition to weave pieces of legend, proverbs, music, poetry, and history together with references to writers as diverse as Soyinka, Shakespeare, Djebar, Baudelaire, Cesaire, Waugh, Senghor, and Beckett, Waberi succeeds in bringing his country into a context that reaches well beyond the Horn of Africa. Originally published in France in 1994 as ""Le Pays sans ombre"", this newly translated collection presents stories about the precolonial and colonial past of Djibouti alongside those set in the postcolonial era. With irony and humor, these short stories portray madmen, poets, artists, French colonists, pseudointellectuals, young women, aspiring politicians, famished refugees, khat chewers, nomads struggling to survive in Djibouti's ruthless natural environment, or tramps living (and dying) in Balbala, the shantytown that stretches to the south of the capital. Waberi's complex web of allusions locates his tales at an intersection between history and ethnography, politics and literature. While written in a narrative prose, these stories nevertheless call on an indigenous literary tradition that elevates poetry to the highest standing. By juxtaposing the present with the past, the individual with the collective, the colonized with the colonizer, the local with the global, ""The Land without Shadows"" composes an image of Djibouti that is at times both kaleidoscopic and cinematographic. Here the art of the short story offers partial but brilliantly illuminated scenes of the Djiboutian urban and rural landscape, its people, and its history.

I am a dog, the narrator of Patrice Nganang's novel plainly informs us. As such, he has learned not to expect too much from life. He can, however, observe the life around him - in his case the impoverished but dynamic Cameroon of the early 1990s, a time known as les annees de braise (the smoldering years). When he isn't limited by the length of his master's leash, the perceptive, even ironic, Mboudjak wanders the streets of Yaounde, a capital city caught in the throes of social and political change. Only partly understanding the words spoken around him (the other dogs are as unreliable as the humans), Mboudjak relates an experience that not only evokes the wildly diverse language of the streets - a heady brew of French, Pidgin English, the indigenous Medumba, and the urban slang Camfranglais - but also reflects the elusiveness of meaning in politically uncertain times. Mboudjak is not alone in his confusion or in his hardship. The blows he receives from humans and the mocking laughter of other dogs are indicative of a larger pattern of abuse that indicts the ruling regime. Despite its unflinching depiction of a seething, turbulent society, ""Dog Days"" is not a somber story; it is propelled by the humor that is Mboudjak's greatest survival tool, and even by a certain optimism. In the vibrantly chaotic marketplaces, in the bustling energy of Massa Yo's bar, and in the escalating political demonstrations, a brighter future for Cameroon can be glimpsed. This story told by a canine everyman offers something for any reader interested in freedom withheld and the early stirrings that will someday win it back.

I am a dog, the narrator of Patrice Nganang's novel plainly informs us. As such, he has learned not to expect too much from life. He can, however, observe the life around him - in his case the impoverished but dynamic Cameroon of the early 1990s, a time known as les annees de braise (the smoldering years). When he isn't limited by the length of his master's leash, the perceptive, even ironic, Mboudjak wanders the streets of Yaounde, a capital city caught in the throes of social and political change. Only partly understanding the words spoken around him (the other dogs are as unreliable as the humans), Mboudjak relates an experience that not only evokes the wildly diverse language of the streets - a heady brew of French, Pidgin English, the indigenous Medumba, and the urban slang Camfranglais - but also reflects the elusiveness of meaning in politically uncertain times. Mboudjak is not alone in his confusion or in his hardship. The blows he receives from humans and the mocking laughter of other dogs are indicative of a larger pattern of abuse that indicts the ruling regime. Despite its unflinching depiction of a seething, turbulent society, ""Dog Days"" is not a somber story; it is propelled by the humor that is Mboudjak's greatest survival tool, and even by a certain optimism. In the vibrantly chaotic marketplaces, in the bustling energy of Massa Yo's bar, and in the escalating political demonstrations, a brighter future for Cameroon can be glimpsed. This story told by a canine everyman offers something for any reader interested in freedom withheld and the early stirrings that will someday win it back.

Although the past two decades have seen a wide recognition of the notable fiction written in French by African women, little attention has been given to their equally significant poetry. ""A Rain of Words"" is the first comprehensive attempt to survey the poetic production of these women, collecting work by forty-seven poets from a dozen francophone African countries. Some are established writers; others are only beginning to publish their work. Almost none of the poems here have been published outside of Africa or Europe or been previously translated into English. The poems are accompanied by brief biographies of the poets, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography. Supplementing these are a critical introductory essay by Irene Assiba d'Almeida on the artistic role women have played in oral traditions and an essay by Janis A. Mayes discussing language politics and the cultural contexts within which the poetry emerges.This landmark bilingual collection - the result of ten years of research, collection, editing, and translation - offers readers of English or French entry into a flourishing and essential genre of contemporary African literature.

Above All, Don't Look Back follows the path of a young woman - Amina - as she makes her way through a city, a life, and a sense of self that have been ravaged by an earthquake. In this powerful novel, inspired by a devastating earthquake in northern Algeria in 2003, the acclaimed Algerian writer Maissa Bey skillfully interweaves descriptions of the earthquake with descriptions of Amina's family, culture, and country and her place within them. She leaves the reader to wonder whether Amina is fleeing the earthquake or something much more complex. Through prose that marries form and content, Bey shows the full breadth of her talent. She goes beyond straightforward journalistic narrative to represent the inner experience of a victim of a natural disaster. The novel's nonlinear structure and deliberate incoherence plunge the reader into a state of disorientation that will especially resonate for survivors of other natural disasters worldwide. In linking a particular place, context, and event to themes of identity, family, and the relation of the individual to the group and of religion to society, ""Above All, Don't Look Back"" explores psychological and social issues of universal relevance.

The Other Side of the Sea, the first novel by this major Haitian author to be translated into English, expresses a powerful preoccupation with other shores - whether it is the ancestral Africa that still haunts Haitians, the America to which so many have emigrated, or even that final shore, the uncertain afterlife awaiting us all. With two generations sharing the narration, this rich and concise tale covers an impressive span of Haitian history and emotion. Too old to leave her veranda, Noubòt reflects on her past, touching on the 1937 Parsley Massacre, in which thousands of Haitians died at the hands of Dominican soldiers, and lamenting the exodus of so many young people from Haiti, although, ironically, she dreamed of making the trip herself (her name means New Boat in Creole). Her story is juxtaposed with that of her grandson, Jonas, as he suffers the abandonment of friends - including his lover - who emigrated during the Duvalier dictatorships, even feeling an urge to join them. Perhaps most striking is the addition of a third voice - that of an anonymous passenger in steerage recounting a slave ship’s progress to the New World from Africa. This voice from long ago provides a powerful depiction of the sights, sounds, and smells of the Middle Passage and a fascinating counterpoint to the evocations of modern Haiti.

The celebrated and highly versatile writer Leïla Sebbar was born in French colonial Algeria but has lived nearly her entire adult life in France, where she is recognized as a major voice on the penetrating effects of colonialism in contemporary society. The dramatic contrast between her past and present is the subject of the nine autobiographical essays collected in this volume. Written between 1978 and 2006, they trace a journey that began in Aflou, Algeria, where her father ran a schoolhouse, and continued to France, where Sebbar traveled, alone, as a graduate student before eventually realizing her powerful creative vision.The pieces collected in this book capture an array of experiences, sensations, and sentiments surrounding the French colonial presence in Algeria and offer an intimate and prismatic reflection on Sebbar’s bicultural upbringing as the child of an Algerian father and French mother. Sebbar offers an unflinching portrait of her original disconnection from her father’s Arabic language and culture; she goes on to describe her struggle to revive a cultural heritage that her family had deliberately obscured and translate into French the vibrant yet muted Arabic of her father and of Algeria. Looking back from numerous vantage points throughout her life, she presents the complicated and divisive dynamics of being raised ""between two shores""--the colonized and the colonizer.

The celebrated and highly versatile writer Leïla Sebbar was born in French colonial Algeria but has lived nearly her entire adult life in France, where she is recognized as a major voice on the penetrating effects of colonialism in contemporary society. The dramatic contrast between her past and present is the subject of the nine autobiographical essays collected in this volume. Written between 1978 and 2006, they trace a journey that began in Aflou, Algeria, where her father ran a schoolhouse, and continued to France, where Sebbar traveled, alone, as a graduate student before eventually realizing her powerful creative vision.The pieces collected in this book capture an array of experiences, sensations, and sentiments surrounding the French colonial presence in Algeria and offer an intimate and prismatic reflection on Sebbar’s bicultural upbringing as the child of an Algerian father and French mother. Sebbar offers an unflinching portrait of her original disconnection from her father’s Arabic language and culture; she goes on to describe her struggle to revive a cultural heritage that her family had deliberately obscured and translate into French the vibrant yet muted Arabic of her father and of Algeria. Looking back from numerous vantage points throughout her life, she presents the complicated and divisive dynamics of being raised ""between two shores""--the colonized and the colonizer.

Winner of the prestigious Prix Carbet--an award won by such distinguished authors as Maryse Condé, Jamaica Kincaid, and Raphaël Confiant-- Memory at Bay is now available in an English translation that brings to life this powerful novel by one of Haiti’s most vital authors, Évelyne Trouillot. Trouillot introduces us to a bedridden widow of a notorious dictator (in effect, a portrait of Papa Doc Duvalier) and the young émigré who attends to her needs but who harbors a secret--the bitter loss she feels for her mother, a victim of the dictator’s atrocities. The story that unfolds is a deftly plotted psychological drama in which the two women in turn relive their radically contrasting accounts of the dictator’s regime. Partly a retelling of Haiti’s nightmarish history under Duvalier, and partly an exploration of the power of memory, Trouillot’s novel takes a suspenseful turn when the aide contemplates murdering the old widow. Memory at Bay was praised by the Prix Carbet committee for the way it treats the enigmas of destiny and for a pairing of characters whose voices bring the narrative to the edge of the ineffable.

While researching in Nantes, a port city enriched by the slave trade, celebrated French novelist Fabienne Kanor came across a chilling report written in 1774 by the commander of a slave ship, Le Soleil. Captain Louis Mosnier recounted the loss of valuable "cargo" when fourteen African women escaped from the ship’s hold to leap overboard rather than face enslavement. Half of them drowned or were eaten by sharks.From this tragic incident, Kanor has composed a powerful, polyphonic novel in which each woman tells her own vivid story. Their disparate lives from differing cultures, conditions, and perspectives intersect through their violent mistreatment, profound sense of disorientation, and collective act of resistance. These intertwined narratives reveal the brutalizing effects of slavery, not only on the victim but also on the oppressor: the master can no more escape its dehumanizing effects than can the slave.

While researching in Nantes, a port city enriched by the slave trade, celebrated French novelist Fabienne Kanor came across a chilling report written in 1774 by the commander of a slave ship, Le Soleil. Captain Louis Mosnier recounted the loss of valuable "cargo" when fourteen African women escaped from the ship’s hold to leap overboard rather than face enslavement. Half of them drowned or were eaten by sharks.From this tragic incident, Kanor has composed a powerful, polyphonic novel in which each woman tells her own vivid story. Their disparate lives from differing cultures, conditions, and perspectives intersect through their violent mistreatment, profound sense of disorientation, and collective act of resistance. These intertwined narratives reveal the brutalizing effects of slavery, not only on the victim but also on the oppressor: the master can no more escape its dehumanizing effects than can the slave.

The daughter of Haitian journalist and pro-democracy activist Jean Léopold Dominique, who was assassinated in 2000, Jan J. Dominique offers a memoir that provides a uniquely personal perspective on the tumultuous end of the twentieth century in Haiti. Wandering Memory is her elegy for a father and an ode to a beloved, suffering homeland. The book charts the biographical, emotional, and literary journey of a woman moving from one place to another, attempting to return to her craft and put together the pieces of her life in the aftermath of family tragedy. Dominique writes eloquently about love, loss, and traumas both horrifically specific and tragically universal. For readers familiar with Jean Dominique and his life’s work at Radio Haïti, the book offers an intimate perspective on a tale of mythic proportions. For the reading public at large, it offers an approachable and resonant introduction to contemporary Haitian literature, history, and identity.