Fiction From Djibouti

Here’s something you don’t see every day–a book of fiction from and about Djibouti. Abdourahman Waberi’s The Land Without Shadows is remarkable for many reasons: It’s a collection of short stories (at a time when collections are the brebis galeuses of fiction), it’s set in Africa and written by an African author (you don’t need me to tell you that publishers aren’t clamoring for this sort of thing), and it’s translated from the French (less than 3% of fiction published in the States originally appeared in another language). The book is coming out in October from the University of Virginia Press, and it’s got a foreword by acclaimed writer Nuruddin Farah.