In the United States of Africa (French Voices) - Softcover

Waberi, Abdourahman A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803222629 ISBN 13: 9780803222625

Publisher: Bison Books, 2009

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Abdourahman A. Waberi was born in Djibouti in 1965 and has lived in France since 1985. He has published numerous books, articles, and stories. His first collection of short stories, Le Pays Sans Ombre (published in English as The Land without Shadows) won Belgium’s Royal Academy of French Language and Literature Grand Prix. J. M. G. Le Clézio recognized and paid tribute to Waberi in his 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature lecture. David and Nicole Ball, both independent translators in Northampton, Massachusetts, have published several translations separately, as well as together, including Lascaux: A Work of Memory. David Ball won the Modern Language Association’s prize for literary translation in 1996. Percival Everett, professor of creative writing at the University of California–Riverside, is the author of many novels, including, most recently, The Water Cure.

Review:

http://www.arabtimesonline.com/client/pagesdetails.asp?nid=39053&ccid=13 (Arab Times)

http://www.institut-francais.org.uk/talks/conference/paris-and-london-in-postcolonial-imagery.html (institut francais)

http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=2081 (Chad W. Post Three Percent 2009-07-15)

http://nebraskapress.typepad.com/university_of_nebraska_pr/2009/07/speaking-of-summer-reading-lists.html (Cara Pesek UNP blog 2009-07-17)

http://nebraskapress.typepad.com/university_of_nebraska_pr/2009/03/new-march-books-available-now-plus-a-nice-waberi-review-and-some-ereader-news.html (Cara Pesek UNP blog 2009-03-05)

http://nebraskapress.typepad.com/university_of_nebraska_pr/2009/02/index.html (Cara Pesek UNP blog 2009-02-27)

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/blogosphere/16101-lalami-waberi.html (World Literature Today)

"Djibouti-born Waberi's brief and concentrated tale—part satire, part fable, part fever-dream—imagines the world turned upside down: a war rages between Quebec and the American Midwest, and all of "Euramerica" is a dark, barbaric hellhole. In the United States of Africa, however. . . peace and prosperity reign. . . . It's there that a dreamy, restless young artist named Maya ponders her history. . . . Waberi manages to convince of the power of art and love to heal very real rifts."—Publishers Weekly (Publishers Weekly 2009-02-16)

"Writing in French, Waberi—born in Djibouti, but a longtime resident of France—satirizes commonly-held assumptions about the global political and economic order by imagining what things might be like if Africa were to swap places with the West. . . . In David and Nicole Ball's translation, Waberi's prose reads as both riotously funny and lyrically lush, offering big laughs as well as multifaceted subtleties of expression."—Ryan Michael Williams, PopMatters.com (Ryan Michael Williams PopMatters.com 2009-03-02)

"In the United States of Africa is not a simple book. It's not a fun-filled romp in an imagined world turned on its head. It is a very accomplished novel though, one that definitely deserves to be part of the "French Voices" series, and that the University of Nebraska should be admired for bringing out."—Chad W. Post, Three Percent (Chad W. Post Three Percent 2009-02-17)

About this edition

• Publisher: Bison Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0803222629
• ISBN 13: 9780803222625
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 134