Habib Ould Mahfoudh

An intellectual, journalist and founder of Le Calame in Nouakchott, Habib Ould Mahfoudh, who died prematurely (1960-2001), left a generation of admirers and friends inconsolable. For those who might struggle to place Mauritania on a map, in the present day or in history, but also for connoisseurs and lovers of this strange country — and for the delight of the simply curious — the texts gathered here (Chronicles of the time that does not pass) are both an open sesame and an incomparable reading pleasure.

Mahfoudh's verve and irony are directed first at fools and at the powerful, whether Mauritanian or more distant contemporaries, for from the depths of his desert he cast a panoramic gaze over his own time as over the past (and even the future, as his delicious chronicles of anticipation attest). But his writings are also an irreplaceable document for deciphering Mauritania and its complex systems inherited from Mr Maaouiya Ould Taya, who seized the country in a coup d'état in 1984 and ruled it with an iron fist for twenty-one years.