When The Night Agrees To Speak To Me

By Ananda Devi

'If I had only one word to define this book, it would be aliveness-a synonym, plausibly, in Ananda Devi's idiolect, for freedom. Everything-from the Night in the title, to skin, to mud, to a green sari, to sound, to Time itself-is alive ... Translated with calm dexterity and breathtaking attention by Kazim Ali, this is a collection that held my body-eyes and heart and brain-in its jaws from beginning till end.' -- Karthika Nair

Ananda Devi's poetry singes and sings of the body electric, bound by the complex, colonial island politics of Mauritius and yet boundless like the waters that surround it. This book of harsh lyric and enigmatic and erotic prose, takes on a second life in Kazim Ali's sensitive translation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harper Perennial India
• Release date: Jan 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9789390351947

Ananda Devi

Ananda Devi is a Mauritian and French author born in 1957 in Mauritius. Displaying a prodigious writing talent, Devi won her first literary prize at the age of fifteen for a short story in a Radio France Internationale competition. She has published eleven novels as well as short stories and poetry, and was featured at the PEN World Voices Festival in New York in 2015. Her literary awards include the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie (2006) and Prix Télévision Suisse Romande (2007) for Ève de ses décombres, the Prix Louis-Guilloux (2010), the Prix Mokanda (2012). In 2010 Devi was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government and in 2014 she was awarded the Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises by the Académie Française. After a few years spent in Congo-Brazzaville, Devi moved to Ferney-Voltaire in Switzerland in 1989.