“Hamidinou’s Smile”—a Mauritanian story by Ahmed Isselmou
In Ahmed Isselmou's short story, a Mauritanian man struggles to maintain his resilience and perseverance in the face of ongoing misfortunes.
Sawad Hussain
Mauritanian writer and journalist Ahmed Isselmou was born in Nema in east Mauritania. His published works include the short story collection Awaiting the Past (Beirut: Arab Scientific Publishers, 2015); the novels Perforated Life (Cairo: Dar El-Shorouk, 2020) and Outsider Mode (Beirut: Dar Al Adab, 2021). His Outsider Mode won Mauritanian State Appreciation Award 2023. His short story “Floating Paper” won the Stories on Air competition organized by the Kuwaiti magazine Al-Arabi and BBC Arabic in 2009. Formerly a news producer for Al-Arabiya and Al Aan television and the deputy chief editor at Russia Today, he now works as Editor-in-Chief for News bulletins at Al-Jazeera in Qatar.
Sawad Hussain is a translator from Arabic. She is a judge for the Palestine Books Awards. She has run translation workshops under the auspices of Shadow Heroes, Africa Writes, Shubbak Festival, the Yiddish Book Center, the British Library and the National Centre for Writing. She was the 2022 translator in residence at the British Centre for Literary Translation. Her most recent translations include EDO’S SOULS by Stella Gaitano. She tweets @sawadhussain