New review: ‘Nothing More to Lose’

Electronic Intifada, 27th May 2014

With this collection of Najwan Darwish’s poetry — beautifully translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid — The New York Review of Books has made available to English-language readers the work of one of Arabic literature’s biggest new stars… A selection of poems written between 2000 and the present day, the works contained in this slim volume are pugnacious, bitterly angry, tender, witty and sharply intelligent. Many are highly political. Where the classic Palestinian resistance poets — Mahmoud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim and their comrades — sought to describe and depict Palestinian culture and their people’s oppression, and to present often nostalgic or romantic views of the society they remembered or aspired to, this new political poetry is in your face, and often cynical.

The full review is here.