I, Caustic

Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine (trans. Jake Syersak)

I, Caustic is the first English-language translation of Amazigh Moroccan author Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine’s Moi, l’aigre (Éditions du Seuil, 1970). Once hailed as the “Rimbaud of the Maghreb,” Khaïr-Eddine is widely considered a titan of avant-garde literature, and his writing has garnered comparisons to other celebrated Francophone writers such as Antonin Artaud, Samuel Beckett, and Aimé Césaire. I, Caustic is Khaïr-Eddine’s wildly irreverent and vitriolic condemnation of colonization and political repression—composed in a vertiginous, polyvocal collage of fiction, memoir, poetry, political and literary manifesto, drama, historical narrative, and reportage. I, Caustic speaks directly to the conditions of the Moroccan “Years of Lead,” and also to our own political moment, with a relevance rendered immediate through Syersak’s skillful translation. This book is a poetic call to arms against all forms of authoritarianism—written, spoken, or otherwise.