PUBLISHER / EDITOR Margaret Obank DEPUTY EDITOR Samuel Shimon FRONT COVER PHOTOGRAPH Arts Alliance Productions CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Sinan Antoon Fadhil al-Azzawi Issa J Boullata Peter Clark Khaled Mattawa Anton Shammas Paul Starkey Saadi Youssef Mona Zaki CONSULTING EDITORS Etel Adnan Roger Allen Mohammed Bennis Gamal el-Ghitani Marilyn Hacker Erdmute Heller Herbert Mason Yasir Suleiman Susannah Tarbush Saif al-Rahbi EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS: Zuzana Kratka, Susan Wilkes LAYOUT: Banipal Publishing
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CONTENTS No 33, Autumn/Winter 2008
2 MAHMOUD DARWISH –THE PRESENT ABSENT
Poems and Tributes from around the world 4 EDITORIAL – Sinan Antoon The Entourage ofViolins and Clouds 6 Mahmoud Darwish – Poem At the Station of a Train Which Fell off the Map 16 Mahmoud Darwish – Poems from If I were a Stone 19 Articles by: Saadi Yousef, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Denys Johnson Davies,
Wole Soyinka, Mark Strand, Abdo Wazen, Kadhim Jihad Hassan, Alberto Manguel, Amjad Nasser, Marie-Thérèse Abdel-Messih, Giuseppe Goffredo, Fadhil al-Azzawi, Judith Kazantzis, Thomas Høegh, Peter Clark,Clara Janès, Gaber Asfour, Bernard Noël, Mohammed Bennis, Naomi Shihab Nye, Stephen Watts, Qassim Haddad, Saif al-Rahbi, Issa J Boullata, Taha Adnan, Mahmoud Shukair 71 FEATURE ON CONTEMPORARY SYRIAN LITERATURE – Part 3 72 Adonis – Poems from Mihyar of Damascus: His Songs 78 Fawwaz Haddad – Excerpt from the novel Passing Scene 91 Hussein Bin Hamza – Selected Poems 97 Gladys Matar – A short story Forty 101 Khalil al-Neimi – Excerpt from the novel In Praise of Desertion 113 Ibrahim Samuel – Two short stories
BOOK REVIEWS 120 Stephen Watts The Butterfly’s Burden by Mahmoud Darwish 124 Marilyn Booth TheYear of the Revolutionary Bread-Making Machine by Hassan Daoud
127 Aamer Hussein Wild Mulberries by Iman Humaydan Younes 129 Katarzyna Pieprzak Nuit de l’étranger by Habib Selmi 132 Judith Kazantzis Hakawati by Rabih Almeddine 134 Denys Johnson Davies A Brief Introduction to Modern Arabic Literature by David Tresilian
136 Peter Clark The Collar and the Bracelet by Yahya Taher Abdullah 138 Herbert Mason The Journals of Sarab Affan by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra 140 Susannah Tarbush Gold Dust by Ibrahim al-Koni 144 Marilyn Hacker The Earth in the Attic by Fady Joudah 146 Daniel Newman Contemporary Iraqi Fiction, An Anthology introduced & translated by Shakir Mustafa
149 Peter Clark The Road from Damascaus by Robin Yassin-Kassab 151 BOOKS IN BRIEF 155 EVENTS 155 LONDON: Remembering Sargon Boulus 156 LONDON: The 2008 Saif Ghobash–Banipal Translation Prize Award 160 CONTRIBUTORS, including TRANSLATORS
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BANIPAL NO 33, AUTUMN/WINTER 2008 1
