20th Century
21st Century
A01=Abdellatif Laabi
activism
African
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Arabic
Author_Abdellatif Laabi
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Category1=Non-Fiction
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English
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eq_biography-true-stories
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exile
French
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Language_English
Moroccan
Morocco
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political
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prison writings
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refugee
softlaunch
Translation
Product details
- ISBN 9781784100520
- Publication Date: 28 Jul 2016
- Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature 2020. Winner of an English PEN Award. Beyond the Barbed Wire is a selection of work by Morocco's greatest living poet. Abdellatif Laabi's poetry and literary activism has inspired a generation of writers and thinkers, and it resulted in his decade-long imprisonment. This volume gives a career-spanning overview of Laabi's poetry, from the late 1960s to the 2010s. It includes a generous selection of the prison-writings of the 1970s, poems that speak from 'beyond the borders of what is human', as the poet writes, a hinterland of physical and emotional torture, in which hunger strikes are 'the only weapon we've left'. Among these is a poem addressed to the poet's cell, which is 'right here / inside me / like a second body', and another written piecemeal to friends on the outside and later reassembled. Beyond the Barbed Wire pays testament to the human need to speak in the face of censorship, that 'epic of silence'. These poems, Laabi's 'bitter fruits of the murderous twilight', renew the possibility of a poetry that is genuinely urgent, necessary: a poetry of anger, anguish, love, wit, and hope, touched by a philosopher's vision and perspicuity.
The book includes an interview with the poet in which he discusses his practice, his views on education, his beliefs about a poet's duty, the influence of his parents, and his optimism. With Laabi's renewed prominence in the Moroccan intellectual scene following the Arab Spring, and with a new generation of artists and activists looking to him as a source of inspiration, this book shows why Laabi is more than Morocco's leading poet, but also a guiding cultural and political force.
ABDELLATIF LAABI was born in Fez, Morocco, in 1942. In 1966 he founded Souffles, a radical journal. He was imprisoned from 1972 to 1980 for his activism against the regime of Hassan II. He moved to France in 1985 and received the Prix Goncourt de la Poesie in 2009 and the Academie francaise's Grand prix de la Francophonie in 2011. ANDRE NAFFIS-SAHELY's poetry was featured in Best British Poetry 2014 and the Oxford Poets 2013 anthology. His translations include Money by Emile Zola.
