Victims of a Map: A Bilingual Anthology of Arabic Poetry Book

This volume serves both as an introduction into Arabic poetry as well as into Arabic literature in general, as poetry is the most important and most widely read literary form in the Arab world. It is a both lyrical and political collection of poems by three of the best known and most popular poets of the Arabic language: Mahmud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim and Adonis.

The three authors are considered to be among the most modern and most innovative writers of their language. In a mostly laconic language they give voice to their fellow countrymen's isolation, the bareness of their lives, both hope and hopelessness and, above all, their yearning for freedom. Some of these images may sometimes seem unusual or strange to a western reader (it was for me at least), but patience is rewarded as these poems depict a new and quite different (both geographically and figuratively) scenery and mentality.

This book is also a great resource for Arabic language learners. The Arabic text is vocalized in the most common way (most fathas and the diacritics for long vowels and for the most common words are left out; endings are always vocalized) and the simple sentence structures make it easy to follow the poem while still containing some particularities of the Arabic language.

"We are entitled to love the end of autumn and ask:
Is there room for another autumn in the field to rest our bodies like coal?
An autumn lowering its leaves like gold. I wish we were fig leaves
I wish we were an abandoned plant
To witness the change of seasons. I wish we didn't say goodbye
To the south of the eye so as to ask what
Our fathers had asked when they flew on the tip of the spear. Poetry
And God's name will be merciful to us.
[…]"

"We are entitled to love the end of autumn" by Mahmoud Darwish, p. 18/19