Sun Scars is the first English-language translation of Moroccan-born francophone author Tahar Ben Jelloun’s earliest poetry. Originally published in 1972, this work remains a timeless scorchedearth indictment against those who would cower in “the fault-lines of… silence” while profiteers of political, economic, and religious orders trample a nation. Armed to the teeth with a vitriolic, surreal linguistic, Ben Jelloun chews away the fantastical vision of Morocco as a sun-drenched tourist’s daydream of pay-as-you-play exotica, revealing a people and a landscape writhing in agony just beneath the surface. With seismic finesse and lyrical vision, Sun Scars declares it bad faith to see anything but: “you’ve just got to drag yourself by the tip of your tongue-tied-ness by the pupil of your eyes / what’s unthinkable.” Tahar Ben Jelloun (1944 – ) is an acclaimed poet, novelist, scholar, and human rights activist. In 1966, he was interned in a military camp for participating in student demonstrations against the Moroccan government. There, he wrote his first poems and discovered his passion for writing, eventually establishing himself as one of the most outstanding writers of the Souffles-Anfas generation. He went into exile in France in 1971, where he received a doctorate in social psychology from the University of Paris and authored numerous works, including The Sacred Night (1987), for which he became the first African-born recipient of the Prix Goncourt, and This Blinding Absence of Light (2004), which received the International Dublin Literary Award. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize several times. He lives in Paris.