WINNER OF THE NAGUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURE
A fierce and moving work and an unparalleled rendering of the human aspects of the Palestinian predicament.
Barred from his homeland after 1967 s Six-Day War, the poet Mourid Barghouti spent thirty years in exile shuttling among the world s cities, yet secure in none of them; separated from his family for years at a time; never certain whether he was a visitor, a refugee, a citizen, or a guest. As he returns home for the first time since the Israeli occupation, Barghouti crosses a wooden bridge over the Jordan River into...

Midnight and Other Poems is the first full-length poetry collection to be published in the UK by this remarkable Palestinian writer, previously known to English-language readers for his highly-acclaimed autobiography I Saw Ramallah (Bloomsbury, 2004). Mourid Barghouti has spent many years in exile, and his long poem 'Midnight' is a rich montage of images of the land of his birth and the strong emotional responses to which these images give rise. Here, anger, frustration and despair are juxtaposed with yearning and tenderness in Barghouti's powerful and evocative account of occupation,...