Synopses & Reviews
The Bottom of the Jar is the journey of a boy finding his footing in the heart of Fez during the 1950s, as Morocco began freeing itself from the grip of the French colonial occupation. The narrator vividly recalls his first encounters with the ebullient city, family dramas, and the joys and turbulence of his childhood. He recalls a renegade, hashish-loving uncle, who at nightfall transforms into a beloved Homer, his salt-of-the-earth mother¢s impassioned pleas to a Divine ear, and his father¢s enduring generosity. Told in the spirit of a late-night ramble among friends where hilarious anecdotes and poignant recollections flow in equal parts, Laâbi¢s autobiographical novel offers us a generous glimpse into the formative experiences of a great poet, whose integrity and commitment to social justice earned him an eight-and-a-half year prison sentence during Morocco¢s "year of lead" in The 1970s.
Review
"'Fragments of a Forgotten Genesis' also returns us to the shared historical beginnings of poetry and religious text, the shared tools of verse and image... Though religious texts have also been famously open to widely differing interpretations, those interpretations have tended to view themselves as corrective and final. No such finality will be possible here. The richness of imagery and slewing of the narrative in more than one direction work against any such tactic."
--Alistair Noon, Blackbox Manifold
Synopsis
A searching autobiographical novel about Abdellatif Laâbi's childhood and political struggles.
Synopsis
An exploration of Abdellatif Laâbi's childhood city of Fez, The Bottom of the Jar is a warm and lyrical elegy to his family, full of intimate portraits of the lives of various colorful characters who once prowled the alleyways of Morocco's storied medieval capital.
Abdellatif Laâbi, a poet, novelist, and playwright, was born in 1942 in Fez, Morocco, where he served an eight-year prison sentence under Hassan II. He has lived in Paris ever since. He was awarded the Prix Goncourt for his complete works (La Différence) and the French Academy's Grand Prix de la Francophonie.
About the Author
ABDELLATIF LAÂBI was born in 1942 in Fez, Morocco. He began writing in the mid-1960s, and in 1966 founded the renowned literary magazine Souffles, a literary and political journal that was to incur its editor an eight-year prison sentence (from 1972 to 1981) under the authoritarian reign of Hassan II. Once released, Laâbi left Morocco in 1985 and has lived in Paris ever since. A steadfast pacifist and opponent of all dictatorships, Laâbi is a prolific novelist, poet and playwright and is also an accomplished translator of various Arabic authors into French: including the Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, the Moroccan poet Abdallah Zrika, the Iraqi poet Abdelawahab Al Bayati and the Syrian novelist Hanna Minna. Elected as a member of the Académie Mallarmé in 1988, Laâbi has also has edited numerous anthologies, most notably one of twentieth-century Moroccan poetry. Laâbi received the Prix Robert Ganzo de poésie in 2008, the Prix Goncourt de la Poésie in 2009 for his Œuvre complète (La Différence) and the Académie française's Grand prix de la Francophonie in 2011.
ANDRÉ NAFFIS-SAHELY was born in 1985, in Venice, Italy, of Italian and Iranian parentage. He was raised in Abu Dhabi and later educated in Britain. He has written on literature, film and the visual arts for The Times Literary Supplement, The Independent, The Economist, PN Review and Banipal and is the UK contributor for Words Without Borders. Aside from publishing poetry and fables, he also translates from the French; forthcoming titles include The Rule of Barbarism (Pirogue Poets Series) and The Bottom of the Jar (Archipelago Books), by Abdellatif Laâbi; The Barbary Figs and The Funerals by Rachid Boudjedra (Arabia Books), as well as Frankétienne's Mûr à crever (Archipelago Books). He is currently co-editing a collection of tributes for the poet Michael Hofmann, the subject of his doctoral thesis, which will be published as The Yellow of Unlove (CB Editions). He lives in London.