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Saturday 18 May 2013
Books
Passage of tears Djibouti, a hot, impoverished little country on the Horn of Africa, is a place of great strategic importance, for off its coast lies a crucial passage for the world’s oil. In this novel by Abdourahman A. Waberi, Djibril, a young Djiboutian voluntarily exiled in Montreal, returns to his native land to prepare a report for an American economic intelligence firm. Meanwhile, a shadowy, threatening figure imprisoned in an island cell seems to know Djibril’s every move. He takes dictation from his preaching cellmate known as his “Venerable Master,” but as the words are put on the page, a completely different text appears—the life of Walter Benjamin, Djibril’s favorite author. (...)
Éditions Jean-Claude Lattès (janvier 2006)
The premise of the book is that The United States of Africa Federation is flourishing with its stock markets, its megalopolis, its well known experts and artists. Meanwhile it is completely ignoring the fate of millions of Euramerican refugees pushing to get in and all those grounded on Algerian and the Djerba‟s beaches. The main character is Maya who took this road a very long time ago, the road to the promised land of Africa. A man called "Doctor Papa" was in Normandy for a humanitarian (...)
Gallimard (2003)
Djibouti was the last French colony and became independent in 1977. Despite the Front pour la restauration de l'unité et de la démocratie 's many gatherings the transition was difficult and no room was left for the opposition party in this new country. Waberi tells us about the civil war through the eyes of a child named Bachir Benladen. This child is a soldier and is said (...)
Gallimard (2001)
There are soldiers and poets yellers or smooth talkers and divine drunkards or bum swinggers or stars gleaners or standing shirkers or fighting in vain fellows and they are all throwing wholeheartedly into verbal joustings and fights for stands displaying fabrics from Paris, Milan or Bangkok. Thirteen novelistic variations about people in search of identity and in search of sun. Thirteen ways (...)
Le Serpent à Plumes (2000)
“My sixth novel is the most distressing I would say.” It was written after a two months stay in Rwanda and it is part of a collective project called writing keeps our memory alive. Ten writers started with the project together with African creators and the Fest African festival in Lille carried it out. A harvest of sculls(Moisson de Crânes) is made of three works of fictions and three testimonies.
Le Serpent à plumes, Paris (1997) - Folio, Gallimard (2002)
Djibouti was a piece of confetti of the French Empire caught between Ethiopia Somalia and Eritrea and at the Red Sea‟s mouth. When decolonization started, Djibouti looked for a new identity. Balbala takes place in the Djibouti‟s suburbs during the 1991-1993 civil war, four characters embody the hopes of the youth calling for a new Djiboutian identity. (...)
Centre Culturel Français Arthur Rimbaud, Djibouti (1997)
Here are two different stories. The first one is about a man born and raised in Djibouti who tells us about his country and its memories. As for the second one it conveys the vision of men (...)
Le Serpent à plumes, Paris (1996)
Abdourahman A. Waberi walks on Djibouti‟s land with a notebook he calls “cahier nomade”. It is also the title of the second collection of the trilogy on Djibouti, between Pays sans Ombre and Balbala, Cahier nomade gives us thirteen short stories like caravans coming from this country of no shade, half real and half dream like. Waberi writes about its land telling us about the time when the French President would come from France (...)
Le Serpent à plumes, Paris (1994)
In front of the Indian Ocean and at the gates of Arabia and Africa, we find Djibouti. Dreaming about his country of no shade, dreaming about his land of birth, A.Waberi‟s gives us short stories from the imagery of tales to the brutal reality of today political situation. Those torn out pages from the realm of fancy full of poetry and also full of violence and feverish tensions are altogether the reflection of the battered and ardent lands of the Horn of Africa.
Éditions Pierron (2000)
