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The May 2021 issue of Words Without Borders features writing from Mauritania. With work from Ahmed Isselmou, Aichetou, Moussa Ould Ebnou, Cheikh Nouh, Mariem Mint Derwich, Mamadou Kalidou Ba, Bios Diallo, and July Blalack.
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 literat...
May 2021 Image: Maouya Azziz, Untitled. Courtesy of Imago Mundi. This month we present fiction and poetry from Mauritania. Simultaneously Arab, West African, Saharan, and Sahelian, and straddling the Arabophone and Francophone spheres, Mauritania boasts a rich literature reflecting its multiple cultures. Ahmed Isselmou depicts a global currency system under cyberattack. In tales that speak to Mauritania's tradition of movement, Aichetou looks back to a female community in a seventeenth-century Bedouin encampment, while Moussa Ould Ebnou sends a time traveler in search of a better futur...
Say to the Tomb Poet Bios Diallo connects Mauritania’s struggle to form a united national identity with similar conflicts elsewhere on the continent. Here the poem ends That of its future, of its people I will brandish my own Though full of holes Or harm our land The eternal shepherd. From La Saigne , published 2021 by Obsidiane. © 2021 by Bios Diallo. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2021 by Emma Ramadan. All rights reserved. Subscribe Bios Diallo was born in Sélibaby, in the south of Mauritania. ...