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Through the return of a middle-aged man to the site of an ancient monastery in the hills near Jericho that he once visited as a boy, the incredibly vivid and surprising stories of Hind, a stage actress and brilliant storyteller, the stories of tortuous routes of checkpoints and bureaucratic blockages, and decades of Occupation, Zaqtan creates a narrative of personal reckoning and reflection.   The vectors of memory and historical reflection interweave in this dreamlike narrative, which delivers a singularly powerful depiction of subjective and collective experience in the face of devastating and sweeping historical change.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49748800995601,"sku":"NGR9781803092348","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50898772558097,"sku":"GOR014113414","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51051420483857,"sku":"NIN9781803092348","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":52891057750289,"sku":"CIN1803092343LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1803092343.jpg?v=1751453854"},{"product_id":"like-a-straw-bird-it-follows-me-book-ghassan-zaqtan-9780300173161","title":"Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me","description":"A stirring collection of recent work by a leading poet of the Arab world, superbly translated for English-language readers     In this inspired translation of Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, Ghassan Zaqtan’s tenth and most recent poetry collection, along with selected earlier poems, Fady Joudah brings to English-language readers the best work by one of the most important and original Palestinian poets of our time. With these poems Zaqtan enters new terrain, illuminating the vision of what Arabic poetry in general and Palestinian poetry in particular are capable of. Departing from the lush aesthetics of such celebrated predecessors as Mahmoud Darwish and Adonis, Zaqtan’s daily, delicate narrative, whirling catalogues, and at times austere aesthetics represent a new trajectory, a significant leap for young Arabic poets today.     In his preface to the volume, Joudah analyzes and explores the poet’s body of work. “Ghassan Zaqtan’s poems, in their constant unfolding,” Joudah writes, “invite us to enter them, exit them, map and unmap them, code and decode them, fill them up and empty them, with the living and nonliving, the animate and inanimate, toward a true freedom.”","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50291065159953,"sku":"CIN0300173164G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0300173164.jpg?v=1750812962"},{"product_id":"strangers-in-light-coats-book-ghassan-zaqtan-9781803092386","title":"Strangers in Light Coats","description":"A highly anticipated edition of Zaqtan’s work from 2014 to 2020, all in English for the first time.   Ghassan Zaqtan is not only one of the most significant Palestinian poets at work today, but one of the most important poets writing in Arabic. Since the publication of his first collection in 1980, Zaqtan’s presence as a poet has evolved with the same branching and cumulative complexity as his poems—an invisible system of roots insistently pushing through the impacted soil of political and national narratives.  Strangers in Light Coats is the third collection of Zaqtan’s poetry to appear in English. It brings together poems written between 2014 and 2020 drawn from six volumes of poetry. Catching and holding the smallest particles of observation and experience in their gravity, the poems sprout and grow as though compelled, a trance of process in which fable, myth, and elegy take form only to fall apart and reconfigure, each line picked apart by the next and brought into the new body.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50293386445073,"sku":"NGR9781803092386","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51052396773649,"sku":"NIN9781803092386","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53005272678673,"sku":"GOR014690879","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1803092386.jpg?v=1750833630"},{"product_id":"like-a-straw-bird-it-follows-me-book-ghassan-zaqtan-9780300198409","title":"Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me","description":"With a translation of Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, Ghassan Zaqtan's tenth and most recent poetry collection, along with selected earlier poems, the author brings to English-language readers the best work by one of the most important and original Palestinian poets of our time. He also analyzes and explores the poet's body of work.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50468873339153,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50468875469073,"sku":"CIN030019840XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/030019840X.jpg?v=1750695149"},{"product_id":"where-the-bird-disappeared-book-ghassan-zaqtan-9780857425423","title":"Where the Bird Disappeared","description":"Winner of the 2019 Palestine Book Awards Translation Prize.  This lyrical novel, set in the surroundings of the Palestinian village of Zakariyya, weaves a narrative rich in sensory detail yet troubled by the porousness of memory. It tells the story of the relationship between two figures of deep mythical resonance in the region, Yahya and Zakariyya, figures who live in the present but bear the names-and many traits-of two saints. Ranging from today back to pre-1948 Palestine, the book presents both a compelling portrait of a contemporary village and a sacred geography that lies beyond and beneath the present state of the world. Sensual, rich in allusion, yet at the same time focused on the struggles of today, Where the Bird Disappeared is a powerful novel of both connection and dispossession","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50828485460241,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50828485755153,"sku":"GOR009270105","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52765818618129,"sku":"NGR9780857425423","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0857425420.jpg?v=1750915609"},{"product_id":"silence-that-remains-selected-poems-book-ghassan-zaqtan-9781556595141","title":"The Silence That Remains: Selected Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"[A] rare occurrence in the poetry world.\"--\u003ci\u003eAmerican Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAs a child, Ghassan Zaqtan lived in a refugee camp near the River Jordan. While that painful experience deeply influenced his poetry, when Zaqtan was awarded the prestigious Griffin International Prize, the judges noted: \"His words turn dark into light, hatred into love, death into life. His magic leads us to the clearing where hope becomes possible, where healing begins across individuals, countries, races.\"\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhen interviewed by PBS for their special on Palestinian poets, Zaqtan said, \"I am not the kind of person who will walk in front of the demonstration. I walk behind the demonstration in order to collect the small things that may fall, whether it's the handkerchief or a child's backpack or a purse.\"\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis generous volume represents two decades of incandescent creativity.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eHandkerchief\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eNothing's left to say between us\u003cbr\u003e everything went\u003cbr\u003e into the train that hid its whistle\u003cbr\u003e in the smoke that didn't become a cloud\u003cbr\u003e in the departure that gathered your limbs\u003cbr\u003e Nothing's left to say between us\u003cbr\u003e so let your death be\u003cbr\u003e the insight of dazzling silver\u003cbr\u003e and let the sun of those cities\u003cbr\u003e be a rose on your shoulders\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eGhassan Zaqtan\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of over a dozen books of poetry and fiction, and has edited the poetry journal \u003ci\u003eAl-Soua'ra\u003c\/i\u003e and the literary magazine of the Palestine Liberation Organization, \u003ci\u003eBayader\u003c\/i\u003e. 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That camp - a centre of Palestinian resistance following the Six-Day War and the site of major devastation when Israel razed the camp following the Battle of Karameh in 1968 - is the setting for Zaqtan's first prose work to appear in English, Describing the Past.  This novella is a coming-of-age story, a tale of youth set amid the death and chaos of war and violence. It is an elegy for the loss of a childhood friend, and for childhood itself, brought back to life here as if dreams and memories have merged into a new state of being, an altered consciousness and way of being in and remembering the world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52453552685329,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52453552980241,"sku":"NGR9780857423498","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780857423498.jpg?v=1759368338"},{"product_id":"town-i-never-told-you-about-book-ghassan-zaqtan-9781803096063","title":"The Town I Never Told You About","description":"A haunting, lyrical meditation on memory, loss, and homeland, with the poems threading together the personal and the collective in a Palestine shaped by conflict and beauty.  The Town I Never Told You About gathers poems written by celebrated Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan between 2022 and 2024, at a time of intensifying conflict ravaging his homeland. Emerging from both memory and imagination, these poems trace the contours of hillscapes and villages, mapping a Palestine that is both historical and mythic, personal and collective. In Zaqtan’s hands, language threads its way through time—winding across landscapes marked by war, displacement, and enduring beauty. Each poem feels like part of a longer thread: a moment lifted from an ongoing inner epic, stitched into being with dreamlike clarity and haunting precision.   Long meditative pieces drift through shadow and sunlight, while other poems strike with the sharpness of remembered incident. This is poetry as pilgrimage—quiet, persistent, and full of echoes. A book that doesn’t so much end as continue resonating long after the last page is turned.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52489709191441,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52489710043409,"sku":"NGR9781803096063","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781803096063.jpg?v=1770288383"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-ghassan-zaqtan.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}