5.0
The Shutters
ByPublisher Description
This surreal poetry maps Morocco’s cultural history, as Bouanani hauntingly evokes all of the violence inflicted on his country
The Shutters collects the two most important poetry collections—"The Shutters" and "Photograms"—by the legendary Moroccan writer Ahmed Bouanani. By intertwining myth and tradition with the familiar objects and smells of his lived present, Bouanani reconstructs vivid images of Morocco's past. He weaves together references to the Second World War, the Spanish and French protectorates, the Rif War, dead soldiers, prisoners, and poets screaming in their tombs with mouths full of dirt. His poetry, written in an imposed language with a "strange alphabet," bravely confronts the violence of his country's history—particularly during the period of les années de plomb, the years of lead—all of which bears the brutal imprint of colonization. As Bouanani writes, "These memories retrace the seasons of a country that was quickly forgetful of its past, indifferent to its present, constantly turning its back on the future."Download the free Fable app
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5.0
Between the Words
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“Quick Review: I highly recommend this collection of (translated) poems. First published in Morocco during the 1980s and comprised of poems written during the 1960s and 1970s, this edition contains two of Bouanani's key collections of poems (The Shutters and Photograms). Bouanani's poetry is a pillar of strength in the maelstrom endemic to Morocco (and, more broadly, North Africa) during this time (e.g colonization, war, creeping religious fanaticism and a correlative creeping Arabization of Amazigh North Africa, etc.). Invoking memory, pre-Islamic and ancestral legends, etc. employed with an eerie, hallucinatory effect, Bouanani rails against and laments creeping fascism/authoritarianism, creeping religious fanaticism, social apathy in the face of the erasure of culture/cultural heritage. This meeting of figures from ancestral legends is a brilliantly effective way of confronting - and resurrecting - the ancient in the face of an uncertain future. Highly, highly recommended reading.”
About Ahmed Bouanani
The filmmaker and writer Ahmed Bouanani (1938–2011) was born in Casablanca. When Bouanani was sixteen, during the final days of the colonial era, his father, a police officer, was assassinated—a tragedy that the artist returned to in his work for the rest of his life. Bouanani studied film at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC) in Paris for three years before returning to Morocco and going on to direct several classics of North African cinema. Most of his movies had their genesis in poems, and he published three collections during his lifetime, as well as the novel The Hospital, also appearing in English for the first time with New Directions. Never keen to publish, Bouanani left behind a trove of additional manuscripts.
Other books by Ahmed Bouanani
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