And watch where flowers grow
Where birds go
As harragas do.
Louiza, my heart
We will find way enough and time
We will learn to live
We will learn to laugh
As harragas dream.
Louiza, my life
When the sun shall rise
On your first spring
We will be far away
As harragas go.
My child
My love
My heart, my life
Like your mother, my daughter
We two will be harragas.
Written in Rampe Valée, in 2002,
in the house of the Good Lord
(for that is now its name).
A Note on the Author
Boualem Sansal (b. 1949) is the author of six novels and various other books. His first novel Le Serment des barbares (The Barbarians’ Oath) won the 1999 Prix du Premier Roman. In 2003 he was dismissed from the civil service for criticising the Algerian government. Since the publication in 2006 of Poste restante: Alger. Lettre de colère et d’espoir à mes compatriotes (Poste restante: Letter of anger and hope to my compatriots) his books have been banned in his own country. Today he is considered not only one of Algeria’s most important writers, but also a literary figure of international stature. Le Village de l’allemand (translated into English as The German Mujahid) won France’s Grand Prix RTL LIRE 2008 and Belgium’s Grand Prix de la Francophonie 2008. In 2011 he was awarded the German Booksellers’ Peace Prize and in 2012 the Prix du Roman Arabe, but this prize money was withdrawn, despite protests from the jury, following his visit to Israel to speak at the Jerusalem Writers Festival. He lives in Boumerdès, near Algiers, with his wife.
A Note on the Translator
Frank Wynne has won three major prizes for his translations from the French, including the 2002 IMPAC for Atomised by Michel Houellebecq and the 2005 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for Windows on the World by Frederic Beigbeder. He is also the translator from the Spanish of Tomás Eloy Martínez’s Purgatory, Miguel Figueras’s Kamchatka and Carlos Acosta’s Pig’s Foot. In 2014 he was awarded the Valle Inclán Prize for his translation of Alonso Cueto’s The Blue Hour.