Arabic | Lebanon | Poetry (excerpts)
August, 2009A Celebration of the Obscure and the Luminous, unlike any previously translated work of Adonis, traverses the entire expanse of Arab poetics, making it a uniquely representative text. It contains the elemental lyricism of pre-Islamic poetry, the prophetic and scientific dimensions of the Islamic tradition, and the iconoclasm of his ancient predecessors who defy categorizations in time or aesthetics. Here, knowledge dances with the unknown, history converses with oblivion, and archaic forms present themselves before the reader in the robes of an eternal, luminous present.
Arabic | France | Novel (excerpt)
August, 2009As an adolescent, Zeina left Iraq for the United States with her family, her father having been accused of conspiracy against the regime of Saddam Hussein. Well-integrated in her country of adoption, but raised in the love of her native land, at the age of thirty she decides to return there as an interpreter with the American army. Convinced of the nobility of her mission, yet slightly ashamed of returning in this uniform, she delays in informing her grandmother, the widow of colonel in the Iraqi army. Given the job of translating and sensitizing the American military to Arab culture, the young woman realizes that her role goes beyond this: with reluctance, she is present at interrogations, or bursts into suspect houses during the night... Uneasiness sets in. And disapproval as well, that of her grandmother, of close ones, and, worse still, her own....
Through the beautiful character of this woman torn between two identities, the author paints the picture of the life of expatriate Iraqis in America and of their intensely close relationship with the mother country. The resentment of Iraqis on the inside toward the American occupier is echoed by the pain of families in mourning in the United States. Written in a pacy, punchy language like a soldier’s logbook, this novel renders with great subtlety the wounds that war inflicts on each individual, whether in uniform or not, and thus is universal in effect.
The novel was published in Arabic by Dar el-Jadid, 2008, and in French by Liana Levi, fall 2009.
Mohamed Metwalli was awarded a B.A. in English Literature from Cairo University, Faculty of Arts in 1992. The same year, he won the Yussef el-Khal prize by Riad el-Reyes Publishers in Lebanon for his poetry collection, Once Upon A Time. He co-founded an independent literary magazine, El-Garad, in which his second volume of poems appeared (The Story the People Tell in the Harbor, 1998). He was selected to represent Egypt in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1997. Later he was Poet-in-Residence at the University of Chicago in 1998. He compiled and co-edited an anthology of Modern Egyptian Poetry, Angry Voices, published by the University of Arkansas press in 2002.
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