Quasars

Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine (trans. Jake Syersak)

The last poetry collection of Moroccan writer Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine (1941–1995) is both a fiery warning and a luminous cry for transformation hurled into some of history’s darkest shadows.

Threading myth and geopolitics, ancestral ritual and atomic physics, Quasars rages across Morocco, Haiti, Algeria, Rwanda, Palestine, and beyond—unearthing the psychic wreckage of colonialism and authoritarian rule. Khaïr-Eddine’s poetic incantations—prophetic, hallucinatory, razor-sharp—cut through the void of a silent universe, burning beyond elegy to kindle a spark of renewal. Composed mostly in 1994, during the final year of his life, these texts ignite an unrelenting blaze of cosmic revolt.

“These are Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine’s final poems, written while ill in Rabat after a life of restless wandering. As usual, his sovereign verve, his solidarity with the downtrodden, and his closeness to the earth pervade the ‘rolling tides’ of his lines. But there is also an expansive cosmology at play that gives the book its spiritual leanings. These tales are full of prophets and demons. They depict a world suspended between utter ruin and incomplete rebirth under ‘the celestial glow / of tunneling meteors.’ They appeal to myth and memory as antidotes to the ‘flawless arrow’ of time, to ‘miseries more deadly than hunger.’ There is great maturity not only to the poems, but to the English translations; and Khalid Lyamlahy provides a richly textured introduction.”—Omar Berrada