When We Only Have the Earth - Paperback

by Abdourahman a. Waberi (Author), Nancy Naomi Carlson (Translator)

In this ode to the earth and all its living creatures, French Djiboutian poet, novelist, and essayist Abdourahman A. Waberi sounds the alarm about our imperiled planet, where "the Sahel rises in you, in me / the Red Sea boils in you, in me / Nunvut is melting in you, in me." This translation by Nancy Naomi Carlson preserves the rich musicality of the original French, as well as its frequent use of wordplay and often unusual word choice.

Author Biography

Abdourahman A. Waberi is a poet, novelist, and essayist. He was born in what is now known as the Republic of Djibouti and is a major voice in African postcolonial studies. Waberi is the author of the novel In the United States of Africa (Bison Books, 2009) and has received a multitude of awards and honors, including a PEN France prize and, most recently, a medal from the French Academy. He is an associate professor of French at George Washington University. Nancy Naomi Carlson is a poet, translator, and essayist. She is the recipient of two translation grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the winner of the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. She is the author or translator of fifteen books, including her poetry collection Piano in the Dark and her translation of Samira Negrouche's poetry collection Solio.