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Book Review: When The Night Agrees To Speak To Me by Ananda Devi
An autobiographical poetry collection everyone can relate to
This is a review of the poetry collection titled WHEN THE NIGHT AGREES TO SPEAK TO ME by Ananda Devi. It was published in January 2021.
Laughter rigs the eye better to hide tears of lonely children
That leave pastel streaks
On glass hearts.
Ananda Devi is an award-winning Mauritian novelist and poet with an extensive body of work. Over the course of her career, she has published eleven novels on top of several short stories and poems. WHEN THE NIGHT AGREES TO SPEAK TO ME was translated by Kazim Ali, an American poet, novelist, essayist, and professor.
This poetry collection may be short, but it’s by no means a quick read. This book requires a small degree of work and dedication from the reader to appreciate the writing fully.
At first, this is because the book is in both English and French. From my limited understanding of French, I could tell that most of the short poems at the beginning had direct translations. I became uncertain as the poetry transformed into prose and the English and French were interwoven in the same piece.
The collection is autobiographical. As someone who does not know much about…
