Mohammed Khelef Ghassani was born in 1977 on the island of Pemba, Zanzibar. He studied translation at the Open University of Tanzania, where he received a master's degree in 2014. He now works as a reporter and editor of the broadcasting company Deutsche Welle in Bonn, Germany. He is the author of seven previous collections of poetry in Swahili. Meg Arenberg is a scholar and translator with specializations in Anglophone African, Indian Ocean, and Swahili literatures. Her work has won recognition from the American Comparative Literature Association and the American Literary Translators Association.
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"The journeys Mohammed Ghassani's poetry beautifully takes raise questions about home: Is it a place that only poetry can find? Is it a road map back home or is poetry itself the destination, our final home? In Meg Arenberg's translation is home to be found in many languages? And for the reader, do you now see you live in many homes? Come to Ghassani's poetry all packed and prepared, with your arms wide open ready to embrace your many selves. Home here is a train traveling faster than the speed of light to all destinations at the same time."--Mukoma Wa Ngugi, cofounder of the Safal-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature and author of Logotherapy "This beautiful translation introduces to an English reading audience Mohammed Ghassani's captivating poetry. It is representative of new, young, confident, patriotic, hopeful, and vibrant voices currently emerging out of a long tradition of Kiswahili verse. This is a daring voice very much worth listening to."--Abdilatif Abdalla, Kenyan political activist, author of Sauti ya Dhiki (Voice of Agony), and retired teacher of Kiswahili language and African literature at the University of Leipzig