Abdelwahab Meddeb crosses boundaries in unusual and important ways. Born in Tunis, he is now a French national. In his academic and literary work, he is concerned with the roots and history of Islam and withcrossings, like his own, between Islam and Europe. He is an author of extraordinarily beautiful French; this is the first book to represent this lyrical aspect of his work in English translation.White Traverses is a poetic memoir of growing up in Tunisia, and the contrasts between Islamic and European influences. The intense colors and blinding whites of the Maghreb interweave with the rich traditions ofFrench poetic discourse. Tombeau of Ibn Arabi is a series of prose poems that draw their inspiration from the great Sufi poet of mediaeval Andalusia, Ibn Arabi, whose fervent love poetry both scandalized and transformedIslamic culture, and from Dante, who learned from Ibn Arabi a poetry of sensual love as initiation into spiritual experience.
