Forthcoming in June: Poems and Essays from Gaza, Short Stories from Syria

48 kg, by Batool Abu Akleen, tr. the author, with Graham Liddell, Wiam El-Tamami, Cristina Viti & Yasmin Zaher (Tenement, May 16)

A debut collection from the young Palestinian poet, this bilingual collection brings together forty-eight poems in which each work accounts for a single kilogram: “a body’s mass; a testament to a sieged city; a vivid and visceral voicing of the personal and the public in the midsts of unspeakable violence.”

From the editor’s note by Cristina Viti:

I was introduced to the poetry of Batool Abu Akleen thanks to an Italian translation written by Aldo Nicosia for an anthology of women’s poetry and art dedicated to the memory of Etel Adnan.

I was impressed with this young poet’s ability for close observation and empathy and by the immediacy and vividness of her language. In one instance, in a poem she wrote at the age of fifteen in 2020, she takes on the voice of a mother to describe daily life in a Palestinian refugee camp and the physical and psychic impact of the violence of borders on adults and children alike. Publication of the anthology, for which I wrote an English version of that poem, led to a series of events and exhibitions in which some of Batool’s paintings were also shown, and to the beginning of our correspondence and friendship. Thanks to her good command of English and to her perseverance and courage against the ongoing massacre of her people, we were able to co-translate a number of other poems.

You can also find work by Batool Abu Akleen in MPT, where she was 2024 poet-in-residence, and in the GRIEF issue of ArabLit Quarterly. She also appeared on the most recent episode of the BULAQ podcast.

Fear in the Middle of a Vast Field, by Mustafa Taj Aldeen Almosa, tr. Maisaa Tanjour and Alice Holttum (University of Texas Press)

A short-story collection from a trio of ArabLit Story Prize winners: Syrian author Mustafa Taj Aldeen Almosa, with translators Maisaa Tanjour and Alice Holttum.

As the publisher writes:

A selection of stories by Syrian author and playwright Mustafa Taj Aldeen Almosa about characters enduring the horrors of the Syrian civil war. With exquisite wit and lightness of touch, Almosa portrays the internal world of characters facing great physical violence or psychological pressures. Using both realism and fantastic elements, Almosa weaves short stories that are strange, violent, and delicate at the same time. This collection is an invaluable attempt to denounce war, to exist, to love life in all its manifestations and to learn how to cope with loss and disappointment. It is a cry against fear and death as much as it is an ode and a homage to life and love in times of both war and peace.

Mustafa Taj Aldeen Almosa’s work manages to stay light on its feet even when threading through the most horrific of scenes. Find more work by the author on ArabLit, in Guernica, in LitHub, and in the McSweeney’s collection Aftershocks.

Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide, ed. by Caryl Churchill & Gillian Slovo, featuring Nahil Mohana, Sondos Sabra, Ala’a Obaid & Batool Abu Akleen

As the publisher writes:

For two years, the world has witnessed image after devastating image from Israel’s genocide in Gaza: videos, photos, and Instagram reels showing blanket bombardment, cities in ruin, and entire families pulled from the rubble of their homes. Such enormity can be difficult to process, but behind each image lie ordinary lives full of hope, love and community.

In these diaries, four Gazan women – Batool Abu Akleen, Sondos Sabra, Nahil Mohana and Ala’a Obaid – offer first-hand accounts of Israeli airstrikes, forced displacement and engineered famine. These atrocities are documented alongside the everyday defiance of Palestinians: from the neighbour who fashions an ashtray from the shrapnel of an Israeli missile, to the street vendor who donates his last egg for a child’s birthday cake, to the community of displaced people who pool their resources to stage a traditional wedding.