New Waw, Saharan Oasis (CMES Modern Middle East Literatures in Translation) - Softcover

Al-Koni, Ibrahim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0292754752 ISBN 13: 9780292754751

Publisher: Ctr for Middle Eastern Studies UT-Austin, 2014

Synopsis

Winner, National Translation Award, American Literary Translators Association, 2015

Upon the death of their leader, a group of Tuareg, a nomadic Berber community whose traditional homeland is the Sahara Desert, turns to the heir dictated by tribal custom; however, he is a poet reluctant to don the mantle of leadership. Forced by tribal elders to abandon not only his poetry but his love, who is also a poet, he reluctantly serves as leader. Whether by human design or the meddling of the Spirit World, his death inspires his tribe to settle down permanently, abandoning not only nomadism but also the inherited laws of the tribe. The community they found, New Waw, which they name for the mythical paradise of the Tuareg people, is also the setting of Ibrahim al-Koni’s companion novel, The Puppet.

For al-Koni, this Tuareg tale of the tension between nomadism and settled life represents a choice faced by people everywhere, in many walks of life, as a result of globalism. He sees an inevitable interface between myth and contemporary life.

About this title

Review

" So too, perhaps, the tales in New Waw are purely experiential, without some coded meaning, offering a taste of that desert beyond the Law. This is writing in a different light, offering a view of a new horizon" Source: Rain Taxi

About the Author

Ibrahim al-Koni is an award-winning Libyan writer and one of the most prolific Arabic novelists. He has published more than eighty books, which have been translated into thirty-five languages. In 2015, Al-Koni was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ctr for Middle Eastern Studies UT-Austin
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0292754752
• ISBN 13: 9780292754751
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 166