The Bottom of the Jar

ABDELLATIF LAABI was born in 1942 in Fez, Morocco. He began writing in the mid-1960s, and in 1966 founded the renowned literary magazine Souffles, a literary and political journal that was to incur its editor an eight-year prison sentence (from 1972 to 1981) under the authoritarian reign of Hassan II. Once released, Laabi left Morocco in 1985 and has lived in Paris ever since. A steadfast pacifist and opponent of all dictatorships, Laabi is a prolific novelist, poet and playwright ? and is also an accomplished translator of various Arabic authors into French: including the Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, the Moroccan poet Abdallah Zrika, the Iraqi poet Abdelawahab Al Bayati and the Syrian novelist Hanna Minna. Elected as a member of the Academie Mallarme in 1988, Laabi has also has edited numerous anthologies, most notably one of twentieth-century Moroccan poetry. Laabi received the Prix Robert Ganzo de poesie in 2008, the Prix Goncourt de la Poesie in 2009 for his ?uvre complete (La Difference) and the Academie francaise's Grand prix de la Francophonie in 2011.

ANDRE NAFFIS-SAHELY was born in 1985, in Venice, Italy, of Italian and Iranian parentage. He was raised in Abu Dhabi and later educated in Britain. He has written on literature, film and the visual arts for The Times Literary Supplement, The Independent, The Economist, PN Review and Banipal and is the UK contributor for Words Without Borders. Aside from publishing poetry and fables, he also translates from the French; forthcoming titles include The Rule of Barbarism (Pirogue Poets Series) and The Bottom of the Jar (Archipelago Books), by Abdellatif Laabi; The Barbary Figs and The Funerals by Rachid Boudjedra (Arabia Books), as well as Franketienne's Mur a crever (Archipelago Books). He is currently co-editing a collection of tributes for the poet Michael Hofmann, the subject of his doctoral thesis, which will be published as The Yellow of Unlove (CB Editions). He lives in London.