The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper

Few of us have had the opportunity to visit Djibouti, the small crook of a country strategically located in the Horn of Africa, which makesThe Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper all the more seductive. In his first collection of poetry, the critically acclaimed writer Abdourahman A. Waberi writes passionately about his country’s landscape, drawing for us pictures of desert furrows of fire” and a yellow chameleon sky.” Waberi’s poems take us to unexpected spacesin exile, in the muezzin’s call, and where morning dew is sucked up by the eye of the sunblack often, pink from time to time.”
Translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson, Waberi’s voice is intelligent, at times ironic, and always appealing. His poems strongly condemn the civil wars that have plagued East Africa and advocate tolerance and peace. In this compact volume, such ideas live side by side as a rosary for the treasures of Timbuktu, destroyed by Islamic extremists, and a poem dedicated to Edmond Jabes, the Jewish writer and poet born in Cairo.

With Waberi, the juxtapositionssurprising, provocative, and originalform a good part of the thrill themselves.”Words Without Borders

Abdourahman A. Waberi is a novelist, essayist, poet, and professor of literature at George Washington University. He is the author ofThe Land without Shadows, In the United States of Africa, and Passage of Tears, the last also published by Seagull Books.Nancy Naomi Carlson is an award-winning author and translator.