Fouad Laroui - The Curious Case of Dassoukine's Trousers

PASCAL, BLAISE. Pensées. Trans. W. F. Trotter. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1958.

2. “One day, or one night, a demon will wake you and say to you: this life, as you now live it and have lived it, well, you will have to live it once more, in all its details, even the most minuscule; every joy, every sorrow…every thought and every sigh…in the same succession, from beginning to end. The same inescapable sequence! And then you will have to start over, again and again… Indefinitely!”

Paraphrase of: NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH. The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1974.

3. “The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.”

BLAISE, PASCAL. Pensées. Trans. John Warrington, ed. Louis Lafuma and H.T. Barnwell. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1931.

4. “What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction… All of life is nothing but a dream, and dreams are nothing but dreams.”

CALDERÓN DEL LA BARCA, PEDRO. La vida es sueño. Madrid: Ediciones Catédra, 2004.

Emma Ramadan’s translation of Fouad Laroui’s French.

5. “I cannot fear death for as long as I am here, it is not here. And when it will be here, I will no longer be here. Thus, I will never meet death. Thus, I do not need to be afraid of it…”

Paraphrase of: “Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”

EPICURUS, Letter to Menoeceus. Trans. R. D. Hicks. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910.

Emma Ramadan’s translation of Fouad Laroui’s French.

6. “Don’t aspire, oh my soul, to immortal life. But exhaust the field of the possible.”

PINDAR, Pythian III.

Emma Ramadan’s translation of Fouad Laroui’s French.

7. “The day is rising, we must try to live!”

Paraphrase of: VALÉRY, PAUL. “Le Cimetière marin.” Le Cimetière marin et autres poèmes. Paris: Larousse, 2016.

Emma Ramadan’s translation of Fouad Laroui’s French.

8. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

CAMUS, ALBERT. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Trans. Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage, 1942.

9. “We who perhaps one day shall die, proclaim man as immortal at the flaming heart of the instant.”

PERSE, SAINT-JOHN. Selected Poems. Ed. Mary Ann Caws. New York: New Directions, 1982.

10. “The whole world are actors.”

“Quod fere totus mundus exerceat histrionem.”

Commonly attributed to: PETRONIUS. Policraticus.

11. “… d’en soi et de pour soi , being-in-itself and being-for-itself.”

SARTRE, JEAN-PAUL. Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1993.

FOUAD LAROUI was born in 1958 in Oujda, Morocco. After his studies in the Lycée Lyautey (Casablanca), he joined the prestigious École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (Paris), where he studied engineering. After having worked in the Office Cherifien des Phosphates company in Khouribga (Morocco), he moved to the United Kingdom where he received a PhD in Economics, and moved to the Netherlands where he currently teaches econometrics and environmental science at the University of Amsterdam. In addition, he is devoted to writing: fiction in French, poetry in Dutch, academic and nonfiction work in English. He has published over twenty novels and collections of short stories, poetry, and essays, and is a literary chronicler for the weekly magazine Jeune Afrique and Economia Magazine , and the French-Moroccan radio Médi1. The Curious Case of Doussakine’s Trousers won Laroui his first Prix Goncourt for the short story. Deep Vellum will publish his most recent, Grand Prix Jean Giorno-winning novel The Tribulations of the Last Sjilmassi —his first in English — in 2017.

EMMA RAMADAN is a graduate of Brown University, received her Master's in Cultural Translation from the American University of Paris, and recently completed a Fulbright Fellowship for literary translation in Morocco. Her translation of Anne Garréta’s Sphinx was published by Deep Vellum in spring 2015 and was nominated for the PEN Translation Prize and the Best Translated Book Award. Her translation of Anne Parian’s prose poem Monospace was released by La Presse in fall 2015, and her translations of Anne Garréta’s Prix Medicis-winning novel Not One Day , Fouad Laroui’s The Tribulations of the Last Sjilmassi , and Brice Matthiuessent’s Revenge of the Translator will all be published by Deep Vellum in 2017.

Thank you all for your support. We do this for you, and could not do it without you.

DEAR READERS,

Deep Vellum Publishing is a 501c3 nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 2013 with the threefold mission to publish international literature in English translation; to foster the art and craft of translation; and to build a more vibrant book culture in Dallas and beyond. We seek out literary works of lasting cultural value that both build bridges with foreign cultures and expand our understanding of what literature is and what meaningful impact literature can have in our lives.

Operating as a nonprofit means that we rely on the generosity of tax-deductible donations from individual donors, cultural organizations, government institutions, and foundations to provide a of our operational budget in addition to book sales. Deep Vellum offers multiple donor levels, including the LIGA DE ORO and the LIGA DEL SIGLO. The generosity of donors at every level allows us to pursue an ambitious growth strategy to connect readers with the best works of literature and increase our understanding of the world. Donors at various levels receive customized benefits for their donations, including books and Deep Vellum merchandise, invitations to special events, and named recognition in each book and on our website.

We also rely on subscriptions from readers like you to provide an invaluable ongoing investment in Deep Vellum that demonstrates a commitment to our editorial vision and mission. Subscribers are the bedrock of our support as we grow the readership for these amazing works of literature from every corner of the world. The more subscribers we have, the more we can demonstrate to potential donors and bookstores alike the diverse support we receive and how we use it to grow our mission in ever-new, ever-innovative ways.

From our offices and event space in the historic cultural district of Deep Ellum in central Dallas, we organize and host literary programming such as author readings, translator workshops, creative writing classes, spoken word performances, and interdisciplinary arts events for writers, translators, and artists from across the world. Our goal is to enrich and connect the world through the power of the written and spoken word, and we have been recognized for our efforts by being named one of the “Five Small Presses Changing the Face of the Industry” by Flavorwire and honored as Dallas’s Best Publisher by D Magazine.

If you would like to get involved with Deep Vellum as a donor, subscriber, or volunteer, please contact us at deepvellum.org. We would love to hear from you.

Thank you all. Enjoy reading.

Will Evans

Founder & Publisher

Deep Vellum Publishing