Movement and Stasis: Contemporary Mauritanian Literature
The release of the Hollywood film
The Mauritanian earlier this year made a harrowing tale of torture and injustice at Guantánamo Bay the first Mauritanian story to truly reach the world. When the book the film was based on—
Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi—came out in 2015, there were only three books written by Mauritanian authors available in English.
[1] The number of Mauritanian works which had been translated into other languages or won regional literary awards could be counted on one hand. However, the world literature market’s lack of interest in Mauritania—a country simultaneously Arab, West African, Saharan, and Sahelian—does not reflect its overall literary vitality.