The World's Embrace: Selected Poems

by Abdellatif Laâbi, Victor Reinkling (Translator)

Overview

Compelling poems from one of the most prolific and critically acclaimed of contemporary North African writers. Imprisoned for many years by the Moroccan authorities, Laâbi’s poetry is haunted by memories of torture and prisons and bears witness to his preoccupations with—and resistance to—the growing international sickness of state-supported inhumanity.

Abdellatif Laâbi was born in 1942 in Fez. In 1966, he founded the avant-garde literary and artistic journal Souffles, which helped spark a literary and artistic renaissance through North Africa. Imprisoned for seven years in the ’70s for his political beliefs and his writings, he has lived in Paris since 1985.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780872864139
Publisher:	City Lights Books
Publication date:	02/01/2003
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.40(d)
Language:	French

Table of Contents

	The Sun is Dying	3
	In Praise of Defeat	3
	The Sun Is Dying	31
	Just Love	51
	The World's Embrace	67
	Crumblings	67
	Writing Requires More Than One Hand	91
	Now the Country Grows Distant	91
	Dreams Come to Die Upon the Page	91
	I Am a Child of This Century	93
	Island	93
	I Risk Speaking of my Darkness	93
	Despair Is My Child	95
	There is a Cannibal Reading Me	95
	My Mother's Language	97
	The Blackbird	97
	Writing Requires More than One Hand	99
	The Wolves	99
	Emigration	101
	Two Hours on the Train	101
	Crumbs Under the Table	103
	A House Over There	103
	The Name	105
	Synopsis of Eternity	105
	Life	107
	The Spleen of Casablanca	109
	The Spleen of Casablanca	109
	A Poet Apart	139
	The Earth Opens and Welcomes You	161

Editorial Reviews

"No/ this is not a time for dreams/ A dream is indecent/ and useless/ as the poet's tears," writes Abdellatif La bi in a stanza revealing one of the many facets of The World's Embrace: Selected Poems. Translated by various hands, and edited with an introduction by Victor Reinking and a foreword by Ammiel Alcalay, this book selects from six collections by the Moroccan poet and novelist, who has lived in Paris since 1985, following a term as a political prisoner. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly