Abdourahman waberi biography

Abdourahman A. Waberi (Somali: Cabdiraxmaan Waaberi) is a novelist, essayist, poet, academic, and short-story writer from Djibouti.
Abdourahman A. Waberi is novelist, essayist, poet, and short-story writer.
Abdourahman Waberi is a novelist, essayist, poet, and short-story writer.

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Abdourahman Waberi

Writer and academic from Djibouti

Abdourahman A. Waberi (Somali: Cabdiraxmaan Waaberi) is a novelist, essayist, poet, academic, and short-story writer from Djibouti.

Early life

Abdourahman Waberi was born in Djibouti City in the French Somali Coast, the current Republic of Djibouti. He went to France in 1985 to study English literature. Waberi worked as a literary consultant for Editions Le Serpent à plumes, Paris, and as a literary critic for Le Monde Diplomatique. He has been a member of the International Jury for the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage (Berlin, Germany), 2003 & 2004.

Career

Waberi worked as an English teacher at Caen, France, where he has lived for most of his time since 1985. He was awarded with several honours including the Stefan-George-Preis 2006, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, the Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire in 1996 and the Prix biennal " Mandat pour la liberté " – offered by PEN France, 1998. In 2005, he was chosen amongst the "50 Writers of Future" by the French literary magazine Lire

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Waberi was born in 1965 in Djibouti. In 1985 he moved to France and studied English and French literature in Caen and Dijon. He completed his studies and stayed in France where he published his first volume of stories in 1994. After numerous fellowships and lectureships abroad, Waberi received his doctorate at the University of Paris-Nanterre. He currently teaches as a professor of Francophone literature and creative writing at George Washington University in Washington DC.

The „writing nomad“, as Waberi calls himself, initially focussed on his homeland Djibouti and on the impact that the legacy of the colonial times has until today on the people, their everyday life, the nature and their attempts to find their own way of being. Therefore one may read his first stories collected in «Le Pays sans ombre» (1994) and «Cahier nomade» (1996) and his novel «Balbal» (1997) as a trilogy about Djibouti, in which the author immortalizes this tiny land on the intellectual and literary world map. Some of the short stories were published under the title «Die Legende der Nomadensonne» 1998 i

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Abdourahman
Waberi

Abdourahman Waberi was born in Djibouti in 1965. In 1985, he moved to France to study and completed his doctorate with a thesis on the poetics of space and politics in the texts of Nuruddhin Farah. Since 1994 he has lived as an English teacher in Caen, France. To date he has published seven books, including two volumes of short stories, two novels and a volume of poetry – most recently the novel “Transit” (2003). Abdourahman Waberi writes regularly for Le Monde, Libération, Le Nouvel Observateur, Le monde diplomatique and Lettre International. In the years 2003 and 2004, he was a member of the jury for the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage.

Abdourahman Waberi was twelve years old when Djibouti became independent in 1977, one of the last African countries to do so – this was a profound experience which subsequently made him into one of his people’s great storytellers. In his short stories, Abdourahman Waberi describes the cosmos of Djibouti, telling of everyday life in his home town with its closely-pack