abdellatif laabi at dawson’s

For those of you in the Los Angeles area, here’s a reading you won’t want to miss: Abdellatif Laabi will be at Dawson’s this afternoon at 4 pm. The event is part of a series curated by my friend Andrew. Here’s the event description:

Poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist Abdellatif Laabi is one of the most prolific and critically acclaimed of contemporary North African writers. He was born in 1942 in Fes (Morocco). In 1966 he founded the magazine Souffles which would play an important role in the renewal of Moroccan cultural life. He created the publishing house Atlantes and also the Association de Recherche Culturelle – the activities of which did not please the Moroccan government of the time. Abdellatif Laabi was arrested and spent eight years in jail from 1972 to 1980. He settled in France in 1985. He has published Le Soleil se Meurt in 1992, L’Etreinte du Monde in 1993 and Le Spleen de Casablanca in 1996. His novel, Rue du Retour, has been translated into English and published by Readers International. In 1999 he was awarded the Fonlon Nichols Prize by the African Literature Association and the Wallonie-Bruxelles poetry prize. The World’s Embrace: The Selected Poems of Abdellatif Laabi (City Lights Books, 2003) consists of poems selected by Laabi from three books published in French over the past ten years. A novel, Le Fond de la Jarre, was published by Gallimard in 2002. The World’s Embrace from City Lights, is his latest book in English. For more on Laabi, see his Swarthmore entry. Some of his poetry (in French) is available here.

Doors open at 4. Readings at 4:30. Dawson’s Book Shop is located at 535 N. Larchmont Blvd between Beverly Blvd and Melrose Blvd in the Larchmont district south of Hollywood, CA. Bookstore Tel: 323-469-2186