Listen to the Mourners: The Essential Poems of Nazik Al-Mala'ika

This book is one of the first English translations of Nāzik Al-Malā ika s Arabic poetry, which pioneered the modern Arabic verse movement. It includes forty of her most significant poems, selected from six published volumes, and shows her development from the late romantic orientation to a more psychological approach. The introduction provides a critical analysis of the liberated verse movement and situates the poet among her Arab and Western counterparts.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 142 pages
Publication date: 15 November 2021
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press

This is one of the first book-length English translations of Nāzik Al-Malā ika s Arabic poetry, which pioneered the modern Arabic verse movement and paved the way for a new modernist poetic movement in the Arab world. Until now, very little of Al-Malā ika s poetry has been translated into English, but Listen to the Mourners contains forty of her most significant poems selected from six published volumes, including Life Tragedy and a Song for Man, The Woman in Love with the Night, Sparks and Ashes, The Wave's Nadir, The Moon Tree, and The Sea Alters Its Colours. These poems show the beginning of her development from the late romantic orientation in Arabic poetry toward a more psychological approach. Her poetic form shows a significant liberation from the traditional two-hemistich line in traditional Arabic poetry, which adheres to the traditional Arabic measures of prosody and rhyme. Abdulwāḥid Lu lu a s introduction functions as a critical analysis of the liberated verse movement of the era and situates the poet among her Arab and Western counterparts. This accessible, beautifully rendered, and long overdue translation fills a gap in modern Arabic poetry in translation and will interest students and scholars of Iraqi literature, Middle East studies, women's studies, and comparative literature.

Weight: 230g
Dimension: 153 x 228 x 12 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780268200947