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Come, Take a Gentle Stab Salim Barakat

Come, Take a Gentle Stab By Salim Barakat

Come, Take a Gentle Stab by Salim Barakat


$22.99
Condition - New
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SeriesArab List

Summary

Introduces renowned Kurdish-Syrian writer Salim Barkat to an English audience for the first time, with translated selections from his most acclaimed works of poetry.

Come, Take a Gentle Stab Summary

Come, Take a Gentle Stab: Selected Poems by Salim Barakat

Although Salim Barakat is one of the most renowned and respected contemporary writers in Arabic letters, he remains virtually unknown in the English-speaking world. This first collection of his poetry in English, representing every stage of his career, remedies that startling omission. Come, Take a Gentle Stab features selections from his most acclaimed works of poetry, including excerpts from his book-length poems, rendered into an English that captures the exultation of language for which he is famous. A Kurdish-Syrian man, Barakat chose to write in Arabic, the language of cultural and political hegemony that has marginalized his people. Like Paul Celan, he mastered the language of the oppressor to such an extent that the course of the language itself has been compelled to bend to his will. Barakat pushes Arabic to a point just beyond its linguistic limits, stretching those limits. He resists coherence, but never destroys it, pulling back before the final blow. What results is a figurative abstraction of struggle, as alive as the struggle itself. And always beneath the surface of this roiling water one can glimpse the deep currents of ancient Kurdish culture.

Come, Take a Gentle Stab Reviews

Barakat's exceedingly resistant and exhilaratingly strange verse--paradoxically written by someone who seems absolutely rooted to the depths of the earth while yet able to see humanity as if through the mind of some other being, perhaps language itself--is finally available to English readers. One can only hope that Huda Fakhreddine and Jayson Iwen's resounding translation summons greater interest in the work of this astonishing modern master.--Ammiel Alcalay, poet, scholar, critic, and translator

About Salim Barakat

Salim Barakat is a Kurdish-Syrian writer who has published dozens of novels and poetry anthologies. Raised in northern Syria, he lived in Beirut and Cyprus before settling in Sweden, where he lives today. Huda J. Fakhreddine is the author of several novels. She teaches Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Jayson Iwen is the author of several books. He is professor of writing and English literature at The University of Wisconsin-Superior.

Table of Contents

Every Insider Shall Hail Me and Every Outsider Too (1973) Dinoka Breva, Come, Take a Gentle Stab (excerpt) Union of Lineages Pike (1980) Dylana and Diram (excerpt) With the Same Traps, with the Foxes that Ride the Winds (1982) Fog Composed like a Gentleman Revenge The Recklessness of Sapphire (1996) Ledgers of Plunder (excerpt) Digression in an Abridged Context Confrontations, Pacts, Troughs, and Others ... (1997) Plastics (excerpt) Ran's Farm From Syria (2015) From All the Doors (2017) Lineages of Animal (2019) Dog Turtle Flea Fish Homo Erectus

Additional information

NGR9780857428882
9780857428882
0857428888
Come, Take a Gentle Stab: Selected Poems by Salim Barakat
New
Hardback
Seagull Books London Ltd
2021-09-15
132
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
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