“I'm mostly surprised by the fact he's still alive; given that people have been trying to silence him for almost fifty years, he really shouldn't be. Aged thirty, Abdellatif [Laâbi's ] was kidnapped from his home in Rabat by plainclothes policemen, bundled into the back of an unmarked car, driven to a dingy gaol, and tortured for days on end.” PeopleTryingYearsHas BeensStillsEndsFactsHomeGivenSilenceAliveCarDrivenThirtyFiftyPolicemenKidnapped Author:Andre Naffis-Sahely
“Take Western nations on both sides of the Atlantic, where xenophobic demagogues have been allowed to turn the law-abiding workers who prop up their economies into barbaric freeloaders, all simply to further their nefarious ends.” Has BeensEndsLawTurnsNationsSidesEconomyWesternWorkersBoth SidesAbidingPropsBarbaric Author:Andre Naffis-Sahely
“Generally risk-averse, specialist translation imprints have also hollowed out a fairly comfortable niche for themselves: they get ninety percent of the profits for ten percent of the work, often largely funding their operations - and their salaries - through grants that they don't even apply for. If it wasn't for publicly-funded arts bodies and organizations such as PEN, I wouldn't have been able to work on either [Abdellatif] Laâbi or [ Rashid ] Boudjedra.” IfsHas BeensArtBodyAbleRiskTenComfortablePercentOrganizationProfitOperationsGrantsPensNinetyTranslationsSalaryFundingNicheSpecialists Author:Andre Naffis-Sahely
“Regardless of whether the authors I've translated have been "dead and canonized," or "living and established," or even simply "emerging," I must put myself to the same, old test: "can I do their texts justice?" I've translated twenty-one books, and except for three commissions, I "hand-picked" all my authors on the basis of whether my own peculiar idiosyncrasies would complement their own.” Has BeensBookHandsThreeJusticeMy OwnTestsBasesTwentiesPeculiarEmergingTwenty OneComplementIdiosyncrasies Author:Andre Naffis-Sahely
“Most of us have been subjected to terrible political poetry at least once or twice in our lifetimes, and so we tend to shy away from it.” Has BeensPoliticalTerribleLifetimeShy Author:Andre Naffis-Sahely
