A father recounts memories of growing in a Djibouti on the cusp of independence; a land of shifting deserts and immense heat and one lonely and sick boy finding solace in books. A poignant and timeless story of the complexity of family, the value of poetry and freedom, and the ripple effect of the traumas that stalk our movement.
"Everything starts with a song and everything ends with another song," says the narrator of The Divine Song. Paris is an old Sufi cat who keeps watch over his brilliant yet pathetic master, Sammy Kamau-Williams, the Enchanter. In Sammy, we recognize the African American singer-composer, poet, and novelist Gil Scott-Heron who is best known for his song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." The Divine Song takes us from the shores of Africa to Sammy's ancestors' arrival in the Americas in the hold of the slave ships. From there, Abdourahman A. Waberi takes the characters from Tennessee--under the tutelage of Lili Williams, Sammy's beloved African-born grandmother--to New York and the concert halls of Paris and Berlin, wherever blues and jazz find an enchanted audience. African tales, religious practices, segregation, the civil rights movement, addiction, and jail--Sammy's life comes to encompass the whole of the African American experience. At a time when social and racial divisions have yet again come into sharp relief, this lyrical novel by one of African literature's rising stars is necessary reading for anyone who celebrates the resilience of art.
The poems in this new volume by Abdourahman A. Waberi are introspective and inquisitive, reflecting a deep spiritual bond--with words, with the history of Islam and its great poets, with the landscapes those poets walked, among which Waberi grew up. The sage yearns here for the simplicity of each individual moment to somehow become eternal, for the histories and people that are part of him--his mother, his wife, his unborn child, the sacred texts that ground his being--to come together harmoniously within him, and to emerge through his words. Lyrical and personal, but with powerful historical and cultural resonances, these poems are the work of a master at the height of his powers.
Set in the strategically significant yet impoverished Djibouti, the narrative follows Djibril, a young man exiled in Montreal, as he returns home to report for an American firm. His journey intertwines with a mysterious figure in prison, whose dictations reveal a different story—the life of Walter Benjamin. The novel blends genres, including spy thriller, diary, and parable, while exploring Djibouti's past and critiquing Muslim fundamentalism. Waberi's work is a poignant reflection on childhood, identity, and the complexities of exile.
The narrative explores themes of identity and belonging through the lens of nomadic life. It delves into the experiences of individuals navigating cultural landscapes, reflecting on their connections to both their heritage and the broader world. The author's poetic prose captures the essence of wandering and the search for home, making it a poignant examination of the human condition. The book is enriched by its translation, which preserves the lyrical quality of the original text while making it accessible to a wider audience.
In a literary reversal as deadly serious as it is wickedly satiric, this novel by the acclaimed French-speaking African writer Abdourahman A. Waberi turns the fortunes of the world upside down. On this reimagined globe a stream of sorry humanity flows from the West, from the slums of America and the squalor of Europe, to escape poverty and desperation in the prosperous United States of Africa. It is in this world that an African doctor on a humanitarian mission to France adopts a child. Now a young artist, this girl, Malaïka, travels to the troubled land of her birth in hope of finding her mother—and perhaps something of her lost self. Her search, at times funny and strange, is also deeply poignant, reminding us at every moment of the turns of fate we call truth.