3 books from and about Mauritania: what each is about, the plot, and a note from Professor Kogi.
A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa
Alexis Okeowo
Original language: English · Hardcover · ISBN 978-0316382939
A Moonless, Starless Sky gathers four separate stories reported across different parts of Africa. Alexis Okeowo, a staff writer at the New Yorker, follows a young couple abducted by Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, an activist in Mauritania campaigning almost alone against hereditary slavery, a women's basketball team in Somalia, and a man who took up arms against Boko Haram. Each strand sits in a place where conflict or old systems of control shape ordinary decisions.
The settings differ sharply. The basketball players train and compete in Mogadishu while the city remains a conflict zone. Slavery in Mauritania is hereditary and outlawed, yet still practiced in parts of the country. Okeowo keeps close to the people involved rather than to governments or armed groups, describing the choices available to them and the costs attached.
This was Okeowo's first book, drawn from reporting she carried out over several years. The New York Times Book Review called it rich and urgently necessary. The subjects are private citizens rather than officials, and their efforts are often unrecorded outside their own communities, which is part of what the book sets out to correct.
Plot
In A Moonless, Starless Sky, Okeowo weaves together four narratives that form a powerful tapestry of modern Africa: a young couple, kidnap victims of Joseph Kony's LRA; a Mauritanian waging a lonely campaign against modern-day slavery; a women's basketball team flourishing amid war-torn Somalia; and a vigilante who takes up arms against the extremist group Boko Haram. This debut book by one of America's most acclaimed young journalists illuminates the inner lives of ordinary people doing the extraordinary--lives that are too often hidden, under reported, or ignored by the rest of the world.
Original language: English · Paperback · ISBN 978-0821424384
Ahmed is a camel herder living with his family in a nomadic freeg, a small cluster of families who move together across the Sahara in Mauritania. His days follow the rhythms of seasonal migration, tending his herd, and passing down oral stories that stretch back centuries. His young son Abdullahi is learning the same life, and the family's connection to their camels is both practical and deeply personal.
Several forces press against this way of life at once. French colonial authority operates just beyond the horizon. Towns and settled infrastructure pull people away from nomadic routes. Then a drought arrives, worse than any the community has experienced. Ahmed tries at first to hold steady by keeping to the familiar routines of herding, but when a prized camel named Zarga disappears, he is forced onto a difficult search across the desert. Riding his trusted Laamesh, he encounters strangers who show him both generosity and cruelty, and his knowledge of desert survival is tested repeatedly.
The book is co-authored by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian writer, and Larry Siems. It centers on the collision between a specific pastoral tradition and the pressures of colonialism, urbanization, and environmental crisis, told through one family's experience and one missing animal.
Plot
Ahmed is a camel herder, as his father was before him and as his young son Abdullahi will be after him. The days of Ahmed and the other families in their nomadic freeg are ruled by the rhythms of changing seasons, the needs of his beloved camel herd, and the rich legends and stories that link his life to centuries of tradition.
But Ahmed&;s world is threatened&;by the French colonizers just beyond the horizon, the urbanization of the modern world, and a drought more deadly than any his people have known. At first, Ahmed attempts to ignore these forces by concentrating on the ancient routines of herding life. But these routines are broken when a precious camel named Zarga goes missing. Saddling his trusted Laamesh, praying at the appointed hours, and singing the songs of his fathers for strength, Ahmed sets off to recover Zarga on a perilous journey that will bring him face to face with the best and the worst of humanity and test every facet of his Bedouin desert survival skills.
Original language: Arabic · Paperback · ISBN 978-1910213797
Rayhana lives in a Bedouin camp in Mauritania when a group of foreigners arrives with heavy machinery to extract metal from the surrounding land. Among them is Yahya, a figure whose presence unsettles the familiar order of her life. Her growing connection with him sets off a chain of events that pulls her away from everything she has known, sending her alone toward the city.
As Rayhana leaves, she takes with her the tribe's sacred drum, an act that turns her departure into something far graver than personal rebellion. Her family and community set out in pursuit, determined to reclaim the instrument and hold her accountable. In the city, Rayhana faces a different kind of difficulty: navigating an unfamiliar world full of uncertain loyalties and people whose intentions are hard to read. She is also searching for someone who has gone missing from her own life.
The novel is written by Mbarek Ould Beyrouk and was awarded the Ahmadou-Kourouma Prize in 2016. It is noted as the first novel from Mauritania to appear in English translation. The story follows fractures between rural Bedouin customs and the pressures of urban Mauritanian society, set against the backdrop of foreign resource extraction on traditional land.
Plot
Everything changes for Rayhana when foreigners with strange machines arrive to mine for metal near her Bedouin camp. One of them is the enigmatic Yahya. Rayhana's association with him leads to her abandoning all she knows and fleeing alone to the city. When her tribe discovers she's stolen their sacred drum they pursue her to exact their revenge. Though Rayhana has her own missing person to seek. The Desert and the Drum tells of Rayhana's rift with her family, the disturbing characters she encounters in the metropolis, and her attempts to separate friend from foe and find a place for herself amidst the contradictions of contemporary Mauritania.
Books from Mauritania
