Seven Veils of Seth

About the Author

Ibrahim al-Koni, winner of the 2005 Mohamed Zafzaf Award for the Arabic Novel and the 2008 Shaikh Zayed Book Prize, was born in Libya in 1948. A Tuareg who writes in Arabic, he spent his childhood in the desert and learned to read and write Arabic when he was twelve. After working for the Libyan newspapers Fazzan and al-Thawra, he studied comparative literature at the Gorky Institute in Moscow, where he also worked as a journalist. In Warsaw he edited a Polishlanguage periodical as-Sadaqa, which published translations of short stories from Arabic, including some of his own. Since 1993 he has lived in Switzerland. Of his sixty works, his novels The Bleeding of the Stone, Anubis, and Gold Dust have been published in English translation. At least six of his titles have appeared in French, and at least ten are available in German translation. Representative works by al-Koni are available in approximately thirty-five languages, including Japanese.

Juan Goytisolo in Le Nouvel Observateur (September 9, 1998) referred to Ibrahim al-Koni as a great artist whose works deserve to be known by European readers and remarked on the inexorable way that his characters move from bad to worse, since the final disaster comes as a surprise that seems in retrospect inevitable. Jean-Pierre Péroncel-Hugoz in a review in Le Monde (11 October 2002) greeted the release in French translation of L’Oasis cachée with praise for the universal significance of a work truly presaging the emergence of Arabic literature from its “Oriental rut.”

Ibrahim al-Koni’s works have already become the subject of papers at scholarly conferences and of M.A. theses in various parts of the world. Awarded a Libyan state prize for literature and art in 1996, he has received prizes in Switzerland in 1995, 2001, and 2005 for his books as well as the literary prize of the Canton of Bern. He was awarded a prize from the Franco-Arab Friendship Committee in 2002 for L’Oasis cachée.

The Tuareg are pastoral nomads who speak Tamasheq, a Berber language written in an ancient alphabet and script called Tifinagh. They are distributed through desert and Sahel regions of parts of Libya, Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria. An estimate from 1996 put their numbers at one million and a half. Their affiliation with Islam has been enriched by a vibrant mythology and folklore, which Ibrahim al-Koni links with that of ancient Egypt. The Tamasheq language is also related to ancient Egyptian. The goddess Tanit, revered in ancient Carthage, was once worshiped by the Tuareg along with the male sun god Ragh. Traditional Tuareg society has been marked by caste divisions between nobles, vassals, blacksmiths, and slaves. Tuareg men are famous for wearing veils. Women do not normally wear veils but have head-cloths.

Ibrahim al-Koni has made a name for himself in contemporary Arabic literature, even though he is an outsider, a Tuareg who began life as a nomad. His works are remarkable for telling tales that blend folklore, ancient myths, and vivid descriptions of daily desert and oasis life with existential questions that directly challenge the reader.