Baghdad, Adieu: Selected Poems of Memory and Exile (The Arab List) - Hardcover

Hamdani, Salah Al

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857425447 ISBN 13: 9780857425447

Publisher: Seagull Books, 2019

Synopsis

Iraqi poet Salah Al Hamdani has lived a remarkable life. The author of some forty books in French and Arabic, he began life as a child laborer, with little or no education. As a political prisoner under Saddam Hussein, he learned to read and write Arabic; once he was released form prison, he continued to work against the regime, ultimately, at age twenty-one, choosing exile in Paris. He now writes in French, but he remains a poet of exile, of memory, wounded by the loss of his homeland and those dear to him.
 
This landmark collection gathers thirty-five years of his writings, from his first volume in Arabic, Memory of Embers, to his latest collection, written originally in French, For You I Dream. It offers English-language readers their first substantial overview of Al Hamdani’s work, fired by the fight against injustice and shot through with longing for the home to which he can never return. 
 

About this title

About the Author:

Salah Al Hamdani was born in Baghdad in 1951. He is the author of some forty books in both Arabic and French. He lives in France. Sonia Alland is a writer and translator who divides her time between New York City and her home in a village in southern France. 
 

Review:

“Al Hamdani’s poetry takes us to the banks of the Euphrates, upon which his native Baghdad stands.” (C. Dickson, NPR)

About this edition

• Publisher: Seagull Books
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0857425447
• ISBN 13: 9780857425447
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264