The Land Without Shadows

by Abdourahman A. Waberi, Nuruddin Farah (Foreword), Jeanne Garane (Translator)

One of the first literary works to portray Djiboutians from their own point of view, "The Land without Shadows" is a collection of seventeen short stories. The author, Abdourahman A. Waberi, one of a handful of francophone writers of fiction to have emerged in the twentieth century from the "confetti-sized state" of Djibouti, has already won international recognition and prizes in African literature for his stories and novel. Because his writing is linked to immigration and exile, his native Djibouti occupies center stage in his work. Drawing on the Somali/Djiboutian oral tradition to weave pieces of legend, proverbs, music, poetry, and history together with references to writers as diverse as Soyinka, Shakespeare, Djebar, Baudelaire, Cesaire, Waugh, Senghor, and Beckett, Waberi succeeds in bringing his country into a context that reaches well beyond the Horn of Africa.

Originally published in France in 1994 as "Le Pays sans ombre, " this newly translated collection presents stories about the precolonial and colonial past of Djibouti alongside those set in the postcolonial era. With irony and humor, these short stories portray madmen, poets, artists, French colonists, pseudointellectuals, young women, aspiring politicians, famished refugees, khat chewers, nomads struggling to survive in Djibouti's ruthless natural environment, or tramps living (and dying) in Balbala, the shantytown that stretches to the south of the capital. Waberi's complex web of allusions locates his tales at an intersection between history and ethnography, politics and literature. While written in a narrative prose, these stories nevertheless call on an indigenous literary tradition that elevates poetry to the highest standing.

By juxtaposing the present with the past, the individual with the collective, the colonized with the colonizer, the local with the global, "The Land without Shadows" composes an image of Djibouti that is at times both kaleidoscopic and cinematographic. Here the art of the short story offers partial but brilliantly illuminated scenes of the Djiboutian urban and rural landscape, its people, and its history.

For sale in the U.S. and its territories only

Genres: Africa, Short Stories, Djibouti, Fiction, African Literature

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Abdourahman Waberi nació en la ciudad de Yibuti en la costa somalí francesa, actual República de Yibuti. Se fue a Francia en 1985 para estudiar literatura inglesa. Trabajó como consultor literario para Editions Le Serpent à plumes, París, y como crítico literario para Le Monde Diplomatique. Ha sido miembro del jurado internacional del Premio Lettre Ulysses para el Art of Reportage (Arte del Reportaje) en Berlín, Alemania (2003 y 2004).

Reviews

[Tinea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slow, like life in the desert city or villages the author describes. The book is composed of short vignettes or scenes that illustrate a mood, a place, a character. It is lethargic but sometimes poignant. The French is simple but I had to look up a lot of words, and was rewarded for the effort with word play that made me smile while reading. The book reads like the relaxed days under a paillote chewing khat and watching other people that Waberi so enjoyably manifests in the first story. Elders gossiping, or sometimes telling a long removed memory from the war.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship]

I read this short book (only 80 pages of text, plus a 20-page introduction) for my world books challenge, as a book set in Djibouti. I’m not sure I really “got” it, hence the lack of rating. Though billed as a collection of 17 short stories, most of these pieces are better described as a description, or an extended metaphor. Other reviewers have referred to them as essays, but as most of them seem to exist in fictional space (though often without plot and sometimes even without real characters), rather than advancing an organized argument, that description too seems not quite accurate.

Obviously I can only judge this work as a foreign reader and can’t predict the reactions of those who share the author’s cultural background. But I had to push myself through this one, and didn’t connect with it. The short pieces are highly stylized and often hard to understand, and only a couple, the ones with a recognizable plot, had me at all interested in the fates of the characters. However, the book did show me something of Djibouti. The pieces are set throughout the country’s history: dealing with legends, with the lives of nomads, with the colonial period, with modern war and disenchantment. Unfortunately for a reader unfamiliar with Djibouti, they are not organized chronologically. The introduction did help me understand these pieces and their context a bit better, and for other foreign readers I’d recommend reading that first; this isn’t the sort of book where spoilers are much of a concern. (Academics generally seem to assume that every single reader already knows how every single book ends and that no one gets any enjoyment from discovering the story as they go, so I typically read introductions last if I read them at all, to avoid massive spoilers. But here the introduction can serve as more of a readers’ guide.)

[Val · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories from Djibouti. It was originally published in French as Le pays sans ombre. I read both versions and thought the French version was better and more poetic than the translation, which is a bit leaden in places, although the author collaborated and was presumably happy with it.
Nuruddin Farah says his favourite story from the collection is "The Seascape Painter and the Wind Drinker", it is a good one. I really liked "The Dasbiou Mystery", a playfully satirical comment on colonialism and identity. The stories set post independence are generally more bitter.

[Baklavahalva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this in French. Short stories loosely linked. Surreal, macabre, poetic, what do you expect from the Horn of Africa? I loved his *Aux Etats-Unis d'Afrique* which is for some reason not on Goodreads. *Aux Etats-Unis...* has all the qualities of *Le Pays sans Ombres* but projected on Europe which is in this alternate history what Africa is in our reality. The story of Maya saved and raised by an Erithrean doctor without borders, who is now looking for her roots in the war-torn France is told compassionately and lyrically. Lots of comic relief with references to McDiop, Mona Sylla, Nka furniture, etc. The excerpts from Ethiopian-French phrasebooks are priceless.

[Orgeluse · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of vignettes rather than stories presents a kaleidoscope of past and present life in Djibouti, a small country on the Horn of Africa that is characterized by a barren landscape and a hot climate that is hostile to human life.
As the majority of the textual pieces lack plot and do not provide much insight into the characters' minds, I had difficulty connecting with this collection the more so as I am not really familiar with French literature and,thus, cannot spot any references that might be present in the text.
Without the introduction I would have dnf-ed the book altogether but I assume that readers with a more suitable background knowledge will like this collection as the prose is quite poetic!

[Tumelo Moleleki · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the stories I read but I can't say I know what they were about, only what I suspect they might have been about. Perhaps it is lost in translation. There's also a third of the book taken up by the translator and I guess the foreword or introduction person. I had no desire to read that. I enjoyed the first story, the one where someone suddenly spoke creole and the one where this woman fled an unwanted marriage. Not all the stories are based in Djibouti. Too much focus on Somalia but then that is because I already read all about Somalia in another book plus a few others that kept taking me there. This was supposed to be about Djibouti. Anyway... it was a quick read.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Global Read Challenge 80: Djibouti

These are shorter than short stories- more like microstories or extended thoughts. Some stories were as short as two pages. Some were very atmospheric, but mostly I found them hard to get into because they were so short.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Country: Djibouti

[Totochelamouche · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il est dans le SAS-KAT-CHE-WAN, SAS-KAT-CHE-WAN, retiens ce nom pour toujours sinon gare à l'autre oreille, pauvre quidam!

Voilà : lorsque WAAQ, le dieu anté-islamique des Somalis, notre grand créateur, a donné à l'Ancêtre le chameau, l'animal de la vie dans le désert, WAAQ a demandé à l'Ancêtre de lui sacrifier ce qui lui était le plus cher.

Roulements de tambours : il atteindra Nazareth, la bien nommée. Il sillonnera les flancs méandreux des montagnes du Choa. Ménélik jubilera. Paris soupirera. Addis-Abeba, la nouvelle fleur de l'Empire abyssin toujours conquérant, lui sourira. Addis-Abeba, la capitale rutilante, laissera s'épancher la sueur des ouvriers. Une petite lune blanche ouvrira les festivités. Un jour immensurable : champagne, vin de palme, hydromel abyssin, sodas pour les austères musulmans. Coups de canon depuis la garnison d'Entoto... La ligne sera ouverte le 2 juin 1917. Vive la Compagnie de Chemin de fer franco-éthiopien.

Il a peiné du côté d'Awash (la ville), le territoire est basaltique, la population afar, issa ou orgabo.

L'un est peintre de la mer par vocation, l'autre est buveur de vent par déréliction ; tous deux sont chômeurs. Badar et Dabar ont pour ami un sculpteur de songes tout aussi hailloneux qu'eux. Davantage ils se voient, moins ils ne voient pas le reste de la société. Les autres sont mobilisés pour défendre le pays. La guerre incivile sévit alentour. Mais Badar et Dabar ne l'entendent pas de cette oreille : et pour cause, ils dominent les autres de la tête et des épaules.

En vérité, nous sommes élevés dans le but clairement souligné de sustenter le jour venu nos frères, nos soeurs, nos parents, la grande famille et pourquoi pas la fraction ou le clan dans sa totalité ? Et pourtant nous sommes lâchés dans la jungle civile sans la moindre peseta, et nous sommes (moi déjà et vous bientôt) condamnés à jouer pour tous l'opéra mesquin - entretenant l'illusion qu'on servira à quelque chose un jour ou l'autre.

Tout bon Troglodyte va muer, c'est-à-dire, après chaque cycle, changer d'opinion politique, de relations, de profession, de religion et même souvent de famille. Il est banal qu'un Troglodyte trahisse ses plus proches parents tous les vingt jours pour sauvegarder sa réputation et son statut social. Il n'est pas rare qu'il change aussi de trou, de cavité, de grotte pour un autre trou, une autre cavité ou une autre grotte en tous points semblables à la première juste pour renier ses camarades d'hier. Était-ce le propre des Troglodytes que d'être sans cesse changeants, caméléons imprévisibles ?

Il dormait à la belle étoile comme les pasteurs d'autrefois, de l'époque du Xeer et d'avant le déluge.

Au commencement était l'ogresse. Puis vinrent les hommes qui la vainquirent. Sa mort avait donné naissance à cette ville blanche et lépreuse qui porte en son sein le sceau indélébile. Qu'on s'entende : Djibouti (ou plus exactement « Jabouti ») signifie selon une légende toujours en vigueur la défaite (Jab) de l'ogresse (Bouti).

Pour la petite histoire (qui éclaire bien souvent la grande Histoire), Hamoud est un Toumal, c'est-à-dire qu'il appartient à une caste jugée inférieure et par conséquent méprisée et tenue à l'écart par l'ensemble des ethnies somalies. Les Toumals, parce qu'ils travaillent le fer, sont victimes d'une véritable ségrégation qui ne dit pas son nom.

Juste sous le robinet de la glacière, enveloppé dans un chiffon constamment humide : le khat, la plante de toutes les convoitises dans cette partie du monde. La plante magique. Maléfique. Le khat se présente sous forme de brindilles tenues ensemble par une fibre couleur de liège provenant d'une feuille de bananier.

[Harry Rutherford · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Land Without Shadows is my book from Djibouti for the Read The World challenge. There are a few options available in French, but Waberi seems to be the only choice in English. Having read a few underwhelmed reviews of his novel, In The United States of Africa, I thought I’d try this collection of short pieces.

It seems to be broadly true that Francophone literature from Africa is much more overtly ‘literary’ than the English-language stuff; more playful, more given to formal and stylistic flourishes. Which says something about the influence of French culture and French academia.

Some of these are fairly conventional short stories, others are more like essays or parables or long prose poems. They add up to a sort of portrait of Djibouti — the land without shadows — both in the present and historically.

It’s quite inventive and well-written, but the plain truth is that it never really held my attention. Shrug.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetic, fragmentary pieces that are sometimes stories, sometimes more like essays. I didn't know much about Djbouti before I read this, but I really got a sense from this not only about Djbouti, but about the view from inside a "third world" country, how people deal with the confusion of everyday corruption and incompetence and from lives that make sense.

[Attila · Rating 3 out of 5]

When thinking of Africa, most people think of lush vegetation, lions, zebras, elephants, people living peacefully in small villages. This book presents the gritty reality: the poverty and utter hopelessness of nations destroyed by European colonialism and interference, unable to return to their old way of life, but unable to adapt to the mess they have been left in.

[Beverly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gave me a feel of Djibouti, a country whose name is appearing more frequently in the news. These are more like vignettes than actual short stories in the traditional sense. You get the feel of the landscape, the effect of colonalism and what has happened since the colonials left.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a series of vignettes that I would call gems for their poetic nature,but hesitate to for the darkness to their content. Khat-tinged days, death, abuse, and indifference infuse these stories. I do hope that this is not all that Djibouti and the horn of Africa have to offer...