The Shutters collects the two most important poetry collections – The Shutters and Photograms – by the legendary Moroccan writer Ahmed Bouanani. By intertwining myth and tradition with the familiar objects and smells of his lived present, Bouanani reconstructs vivid images of Morocco's past. He weaves together references to the Second World War, the Spanish and French protectorates, the Rif War, dead soldiers, prisoners, and poets screaming in their tombs with mouths full of dirt. His poetry, written in an imposed language with a "strange alphabet", bravely confronts the violence of his country's history – particularly during the period of "les années de plomp", the years of lead – all of which bears the brutal imprint of colonization. As Bouanani writes, "these memories retrace the seasons of a country that was quickly forgetful of its past, indifferent to its present, constantly turning its back on its future."
Über die Autorin / über den Autor:The filmmaker and writer Ahmed Bouanani (1938-2011) was born in Casablanca. When Bouanani was sixteen, during the final days of the colonial era, his father, a police officer, was assassinated – a tragedy that the artist returned to in his work for the rest of his life. Bouanani studied film at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC) in Paris for three years before returning to Morocco and going on to direct several classics of North African cinema. Most of his movies had their genesis in poems, and he published three collections during his lifetime, as well as the novel The Hospital, also appearing in English for the first time with New Directions. Never keen to publish, Bouanani left behind a trove of additional manuscripts.
Emma Ramadan, a literary translator based in Providence, Rhode Island, has received a PEN/Heim grant, an NEA translation fellowship, and a Fulbright scholarship in Morocco, all for her work on Ahmed Bouanani's poetry.
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