Today marks thirty-five years since the start of the Iran-Iraq war, which lasted eight years, the longest conventional war of the twentieth century. The war began when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ordered invasions of Iran via land and air, following a tumultuous history of border disputes between the two countries. In 1975, the Algiers Agreement was created to end conflict over the Shatt al-Arab River and the oil-rich Khuzestan province. On September 17, 1980, Hussein declared:

“The next step is to reject the tyranny’s discourse.” John Berger

When news broke of a high school freshman in Irving, Texas—a Sudanese-American Muslim student named Ahmed Mohamed—arrested for presenting his teacher with his homemade clock, allegedly thought to be a “hoax bomb,” Barack Obama was quick to join the chorus of support for the young inventor.

Translated from the French by Bhakti Shringarpure.

There is a peculiar situation in the Francophone world in which books only travel from the global North to the global South. On the one hand, French publishers are omnipresent in the bookstores, libraries and African scholarly programs, and on the other hand, a network of NGOs lug books across the continent with the aim of developing reading and literacy programs that promote the French language.