The Sahara Testaments

Well, loyal readers of this blog on which I sadly haven't written too much, know that I have been working on the translation of "The Sahara Testaments" Luckily for a venture like this I am surrounded by smart and kind people. I started out translating all two hundred poems. And then slowly I realised that publishing the full translation in Dutch side to side with the English would yield over 420 pages. Apart from the translation there were many cultural references, landscape elements, even political events which needed explanation.
Frank Devos was my first proofreader, and since we worked well together we would take several afternoons and comb thoroughly trough the translations. We realised more and more that publishing the complete volume in both languages wouldn't work for any publisher. Thus we came up with the idea of publishing the three first chapters. Still 133 pages. I must not only thank Frank but also Joke Van Leeuwen, President of PEN-Flanders and of course Tade Ipadeola for having written something that managed to stay with me, something that taught me a lot about Afrika and about writing. Joke caught still a few slip ups or inconsistencies in my spelling. So I am grateful that the text is now presentable to a publisher... Tade thanks for trusting me with your text. When the translation of the three first chapters of your book is published, we hope that you can come over. It would be wonderful that for the presentation you would read your poems in English and I could present them in Dutch. I'll have to sit down with Joke and she said she would approach the publisher Harold Polis. A new player on the Dutch/Flemish publishing market.