Almost as soon as it was published in 1990, Ahmed Bouanani’s great novel, L’Hôpital, disappeared. Not until two decades later, in 2012, was it re-released in both Morocco and France to international acclaim. Bouanani (1938–2011) was a Moroccan writer, poet, filmmaker, and illustrator, and a leading figure of the Moroccan intelligentsia of his time. Bouanani was hesitant to publish much of his work during his lifetime, leaving behind dozens of unpublished manuscripts when he died. Many were lost or damaged in a devastating apartment fire, but now Bouanani’s works The Shutters and The Hospital are appearing for the first time in English at last.

An evening with Emma Ramadan, Omar Berrada, and Anna Della Subin, Wednesday, September 5th at 7:00pm.

Omar Berrada is a writer, translator, and curator, and the director of Dar al-Ma’mûn, a library and residency center for artists, scholars, and writers located on the outskirts of Marrakech. He currently lives in New York, and teaches at The Cooper Union.

Emma Ramadan is a literary translator based in Providence, Rhode Island, and the co-owner of Riffraff Bookstore. She is the recipient of a PEN/Heim grant, an NEA Translation Fellowship, and a Fulbright for her work on Ahmed Bouanani.

Anna Della Subin writes about sleepwalkers, grave worship, imperial Ethiopian court etiquette, visions of the flood. Her book Accidental Gods is forthcoming from Metropolitan Books in the US and Granta in the UK.