A much-anticipated follow-up to Nothing More to Lose, this is only the second poetry collection translated into English from a vital voice of Arabic literature. “We drag histories behind us,” the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish writes in Exhausted on the Cross, “here / where there’s neither land / nor sky.” In pared-down lines, brilliantly translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Darwish records what Raúl Zurita describes as “something immemorial, almost unspeakable”—a poetry driven by a “moral imperative” to be a “colossal record of violence and, at the same time, the no less colossal record of compassion.” Darwish’s poems cross histories, cultures, and geographies, taking us from the grime of modern-day Shatila and the opulence of medieval Baghdad to the gardens of Samarkand and the open-air prison of present-day Gaza. We join the Persian poet Hafez in the conquered city of Shiraz and converse with the Prophet Mohammad in Medina. Poem after poem evokes the humor in the face of despair, the hope in the face of nightmare.
Author
Najwan Darwish; born December 8, 1978 in Jerusalem, is an Arabic-language poet. The New York Review of Books has described him as "one of the foremost Arabic-language poets of his generation". In 2014, NPR included his book Nothing More To Lose as one of the best books of the year. Besides being a prominent poet, Darwish is a leading cultural editor in the Arab world. He has played an important role in developing Arabic cultural journalism by co-founding independent magazines and mainstream daily newspapers, as well as being a sharp critic.He was the chief editor of Min Wa Ila (From/To) Magazine in Palestine,and the cultural critic for Al Akhbar newspaper in Lebanon from 2006 to 2012, amongst other key positions in cultural journalism. In 2014 he became the founding chief editor of the cultural section of Al Araby Al Jadeed (The New Arab), a major pan-Arab daily newspaper based in London. Darwish is active in diverse media, culture and art projects in Palestine and the Arab world. He was the literary advisor of MASARAT Palestine, the Palestinian Cultural and Artistic Year in Belgium (2007-2008) alongside the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish who was the head of the committee. He is the literary advisor to the Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest). Darwish is a speaker and lecturer. Past lectures include "The Sexual Image of Israel in the Arab Imagination" at Homeworks (Beirut, 2008) and "To Be a Palestinian Intellectual After Oslo" at the House of Culture (Oslo, 2009).
