The October Bookclub will discuss one of the latest books from Banipal Books:

Birds of Nabaa,
A Mauritanian Tale

by Abdallah Uld Mohamadi Bah

Translated from the Arabic by Raphael Cohen

This Mauritanian novel in English translation, the first from Arabic, is an unforgettable journey into the heart of the country by the well-known Mauritanian journalist and writer Abdallah Uld Mohamadi Bah.

How the harsh environment affects people's personalities and how migration shapes their futures, their fates, are two themes that run quietly through the work, in concert with intriguing dreams of the narrator and others, poetry recitation sessions and a return to a changed Nabaa.

In spite of grim and alarming events that create an asymmetric conflict between the earth and human expectations, the narrator remains hopeful, saying: “In Nabaa, things were happening that were impossible to explain, but that did not make me lose hope in a better future. After the seven lean cows come the seven fat cows, after the drought the rains will fall, and after difficulty comes ease.”

Birds of Nabaa follows the physical and spiritual journeys of its narrator from his beginnings in the remote Mauritanian village of Nabaa, whose flocks lead the community according to their own inscrutable instincts, to life in Madrid, the Gulf states and Guinea, where his work as an embassy accountant takes him.

Inspired by the Sahara of his childhood and devoted from an early age to the vagabond life of the pre-Islamic poets, the narrator’s constant life on the move in search of the inner stillness, known only to desert dwellers, leads him to the music, song and poetry so much a part of Mauritanian life and the spiritual universe of Sufism around them.

The mix of diverse characters joining him includes Teresa, his Brazilian neighbour in Madrid whom he taught to make tea the Mauritanian way; Rajab the inspiring teacher in a blue face veil; Hussein the poet; Mariam, a postman between the living and the dead via cowrie shell readings; the exiled judge of Chinguetti who founded Nabaa; as well as his close friend the voracious reader and rebel Abdurrahman who wants to change the world, Abdel Hadi, the holy-fool sheikh with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Arab history and poetry, and Ould al-Taher, the first climate-change refugee.

However, years without any rain bring drought, wells dry out, livelihoods shatter, and dreams turn to disturbing nightmarish premonitions of disaster. As desertification takes hold, that paradise of southern Mauritania, of Nabaa, gradually declines and the waves of migration, always a feature of life in the Sahara, intensify. leading to a shattering denouement.

Available as a paperback or an ebook

• Order online or from any good bookshop
• from Inpress Books, either paperback or ebook (click here)
• for the paperback directly from Banipal Books with PayPal, click here

• For more information, click here

• To read an excerpt click here

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Abdallah Uld Mohamadi Bah is a writer, novelist and journalist from Nabaghiya in southern Mauritania. His journalistic career began in the mid-1980s with al-Sha‘b newspaper. He became the West Africa correspondent for the daily al-Sharq al-Awsat, and later for MBC TV, and for Aljazeera in Africa.

As well as Birds of Nabaa (Tuyour Nabaa) his works include Timbuktu wa Akhawatuha (Timbuktu and her Sisters) and Yawmiyat Sahafi fe Ifreeqiya (Diary of a Journalist in Africa).

He is currently CEO of Sahara Media Group in north and west Africa.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Raphael Cohen is a professional translator and lexicographer based in Cairo. His many translations of works by Arab authors include two in 2021 with Banipal Books, the novel The Madness of Despair by Ghalya F T Al Said, and Ahmed Morsi's Poems of Alexandria and New York, which he also introduced. Forthcoming in 2024 is The Secrets of Folder 42 by Abdelmajid Sebbata. For more information, click here.

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Front cover image courtesy Azouz Begag

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ALL WELCOME

Please email bookclub@banipal.co.uk to request the Zoom Login.

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to everyone who has emailed/messaged to attend.