Abdourahman Waberi

Abdourahman A. Waberi
Waberi at the Festivaletteratura, Mantua (2008)
Born	(1965-07-20) 20 July 1965 Djibouti City, Djibouti
Language	Somali, English and French
Nationality	Djiboutian

Abdourahman A. Waberi (Somali: Cabdiraxmaan Waaberi) is a novelist, essayist, poet, academic, and short-story writer from Djibouti.

Early life

Abdourahman Waberi was born in Djibouti City in the French Somali Coast, the current Republic of Djibouti. He went to France in 1985 to study English literature. Waberi worked as a literary consultant for Editions Le Serpent à plumes, Paris, and as a literary critic for Le Monde Diplomatique. He has been a member of the International Jury for the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage (Berlin, Germany), 2003 & 2004.

Career

Waberi worked as an English teacher at Caen, France, where he has lived for most of his time since 1985. He was awarded with several honours including the Stefan-George-Preis 2006, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, the Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire in 1996 and the Prix biennal " Mandat pour la liberté " – offered by PEN France, 1998. In 2005, he was chosen amongst the "50 Writers of Future" by the French literary magazine Lire.

From 2006 to 2007, Waberi lived in Berlin as a guest of the DAAD. In 2007, he was a Donald and Susan Newhouse Center Humanities Fellow at Wellesley College, USA. His work has been translated into more than ten languages. In 2007, Waberi participated in the international Stock Exchange of Visions project. In 2010, he was a William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellow and a visiting professor at Claremont McKenna College, California, a jury member of the International Dublin Literary Award and an Academie de France Villa Medici fellow in Roma, Italy. In May and June 2012, he was a visiting professor at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. His novel Transit was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award (2013). Nancy Naomi Carlson is a 2013 recipient of an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship for translating his book of poetry. He teaches now French and Francophone Studies and Creative Writing at George Washington University, Washington DC.

During the fall semester of 2023, he held the visiting professor chair of "World Literature" at the University of Bern in Switzerland. The subject of his weekly seminar was "Afrofuturism" – the artistic movement that explores identities, forms of expression, and future visions within the African diaspora.

Bibliography

• Le Pays sans ombre (The Land Without Shadows), Serpent à plumes, Paris, 1994, ISBN 2-908957-31-0
• Balbala, Serpent à plumes, Paris 1998, ISBN 2-07-042121-X
• Cahier nomade ("Nomad's Book"), Serpent à plumes, Paris, 1999 ISBN 2-84261-127-6
• L'Œil nomade : voyage à travers le pays Djibouti ("Nomad's Eye"), CCFAR, Djibouti, 1997, ISBN 2-7384-5222-1
• Les Nomades, mes frères vont boire à, la Grande Ourse (The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper) Pierron, Sarreguemines 2000 et Mémoire d'encrier, Montréal, 2013.
• Rift, routes, rails ("Rifts, Roads and Rails"), Gallimard, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-07-076023-5
• Transit, Gallimard, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-07-076874-0
• Moisson de crânes (Harvest of Skulls), Serpent à plumes, Paris 2004 ISBN 2-7538-0020-0
• Aux États-Unis d'Afrique (In the United States of Africa), Lattès, Paris 2006
• Passage des larmes (Passage of Tears), Lattès, Paris, 2009.
• La Divine Chanson (The Divine Song), Paris, Éditions Zulma, 2015
• Mon nom est aube (Naming the Dawn), Éditions Vents d'ailleurs, 2016
• Pourquoi tu danses quand tu marches ? (Why Do You Dance When You Walk?), Paris, Jean-Claude Lattès, 2019
• Dis-moi pour qui j’existe ? (novel), Paris, Jean-Claude Lattès, 2022.

Translated works

• The Land Without Shadows (short story collection), translated by Jeanne Garane, prefaced by Nuruddin Farah, University of Virginia Press, 2005
• In the United States of Africa (novel), translation by David and Nicole Ball, prefaced by Percival Everett, University of Nebraska Press, March 2009.
• Passage of Tears (novel), translation by David and Nicole Ball, Seagull Books, 2011.
• Transit (novel), translation by David and Nicole Ball, Indiana University Press, 2012.
• The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper (poems), translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson, Seagull Books, 2015.
• Harvest of Skulls, translated by Dominic Richard David Thomas, Indiana University Press, 2016
• Naming the Dawn (poems), translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson, Seagull Books, 2018.
• The Divine Song, translated by David and Nicole Ball, Seagull Books, 2020
• Why Do You Dance When You Walk? translated by David and Nicole Ball, Cassava Republic Press, 2022
• When We Only Have the Earth (poems), translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson, University of Nebraska Press, 2025.

Awards and honours

• Grand Prix de la nouvelle francophone de l'Académie royale de langue et de littérature françaises de Belgique (Fondation Henri Cornélus) for Le Pays sans ombre
• 1994: Prix Albert-Bernard de l'Académie des sciences d'outre-mer à Paris for Le Pays sans ombre
• 1996: Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire for Cahier nomade
• Prix biennal « Mandat pour la liberté » du PEN club français
• Prix collectif du Festival du Premier roman de Chambéry for Balbala
• 2000: Finalist for the Caine Prize
• 2004: Prix littéraire de la Ville de Caen, jury lycéen
• 2006: Guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm – Literature
• 2006: Stefan-George-Preis — Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf
• 2015: Prix Louis-Guilloux for La Divine Chanson

External links

• Official site (mostly in French)
• Brief biography (in English)
• Stock Exchange Of Visions: Visions of Waberi Abdourahman (Video Interviews)
• Abdourahman A. Waberi at IMDb
• Webcast at the Library of Congress, 14 November 2013