Writing To Remember

This episode is almost entirely dedicated to the work of the Moroccan film-maker, novelist, artist, and poet Ahmed Bouanani – much of which has yet to be released, and much of which was censored or destroyed in his own life.

Show notes

• Bouanani’s cult-classic novel L’hôpital was re-published in 2012 by DK Editions in Morocco and Editions Verdier in France. Muhammad al-Khudairi’s Arabic translation was published in 2016. Two of Bounanai’s books have been released this year in English translation: The Shutters (translated by Emma Ramadan) and The Hospital (translated by Lara Vergnaud), both from New Directions Press.  

• A fragment of Bouanani’s filmwork can be seen online: his film about Casablanca in the 1960s,  “6 et 12”, is on YouTube, as is a section of As-Sarab / Mirage. The film-maker Ali Essafi’s documentary about Bouanani is entitled Crossing the Seventh Gate.

• Touda Bouanani, Ahmed Bouanani’s daughter and a visual artist, has conserved his work and featured it in her own.

• Ursula’s piece on Bouanani in the New York Review of Books is unfortunately pay-walled now.

• Marcia should have a piece about the discovery of Naguib Mahfouz’s “lost” manuscript, set to be published December 11 by Dar al-Saqi in Lebanon, forthcoming soon in LitHub. An extended Q&A with translator Roger Allen, agent Yasmina Jraissati, and manuscript-discoverer Mohamed Shoair will follow on ArabLit. The English translation of what’s being called The Whisper of Stars is forthcoming from Saqi Books in 2019.