Literary Criticism - African

"Darwish is the premier poetic voice of the Palestinian people . . . lyrical, imagistic, plaintive, haunting, always passionate, and elegant--and never anything less than free--what he would dream for all his people." -- Naomi Shihab Nye "Catherine Cobham's translations sway delicately between mystery...

The first English translation of recent poetry by the late Mahmoud Darwish, the most important Palestinian contemporary poet. Almond Blossoms and Beyond is one of the last collections of poetry that Mahmoud Darwish left to the world. Composed of brief lyric poems and the...

A major new look at Africa's influence on European culture and how colonization remade Africa in the image of a medieval Europe. Virgil. Chaucer. Petrarch. These names resonate with many as cornerstones of European culture. Yet, in Atlas's Bones, D. Vance Smith reveals that...

Ngugi describes this book as 'a summary of some of the issues in which I have been passionately involved for the last twenty years of my practice in fiction, theatre, criticism and in teaching of literature. North America: Heinemann; Kenya: EAEPAuthor: Ngugi Wa Thiong'oPublisher:...

This open access book is the first in a groundbreaking series making Babylonian literature accessible. It presents Enuma Elish in transcription and translation, with an introduction for non-specialist readers and essays from leading scholars in the field. Acting as a companion to the poem,...

One of Lit Hub's most Anticipated Poetry Books !Like Mandelstam, Akhmatova, and Vallejo, Gazan poet Nasser Rabah embodies the magnificent possibilities of the human spirit and imagination under extreme conditions."Nasser Rabah is my favorite living poet in Palestine. The musicality of his lines could...

Gilgamesh is considered one of the masterpieces of world literature, but until now there has not been a version that is a superlative literary text in its own right. Acclaimed by critics and scholars, Stephen Mitchell's version allows us to enter an ancient masterpiece...

Winner of the 2012 National Translation Award "What Sinan [Antoon] has done with In the Presence of Absence is a kind of miraculous work of dedication and love. Reading this volume is sheer enjoyment and sublimity." --Saadi Yousef "There are two maps of Palestine...

"The most celebrated writer of verse in the Arab world."-Adam Shatz, The New York Times Poetry from former national poet of Palestine, illustrated by original drawings by John Berger Mahmoud Darwish was the Palestinian national poet. One of the greatest poets of the last...

A selection of the exquisite, passionate verse of the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish, superbly translated into English Finalist for the 2025 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation - Finalist for the 2024 Big Other Book Award for Translation "An unvarnished view of war and...

Translated into English for the first time after its publication in 1967, Ghassan Kanafani's On Zionist Literature makes an incisive analysis of the literary fiction written in support of the Zionist colonization of Palestine.Interweaving his literary criticism of works by George Eliot, Arthur Koestler,...

Petroforms contributes a much-needed theory of form and genre to the cutting-edge field of petrocriticism, itself an offshoot of developments in postcolonial ecocriticism. Studies of resource fiction and inquiries in the energy humanities have recently taken their rightful place as necessary reflections on the...

After years of study in Europe, the young narrator of Season of Migration to the North returns to his village along the Nile in the Sudan. It is the 1960s, and he is eager to make a contribution to the new postcolonial life of...

Since the discovery over one hundred years ago of a body of Mesopotamian poetry preserved on clay tablets, what has come to be known as the Epic of Gilgamesh has been considered a masterpiece of ancient literature. It recounts the deeds of a hero-king...

This Norton Critical Edition includes: An expanded translation from the Akkadian by Benjamin R. Foster based on new discoveries, adding lines throughout the world's oldest epic masterpiece. Benjamin R. Foster's full introduction and expanded explanatory annotations. Eleven illustrations. Analogues from the Sumerian and Hittite...

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural awakening among African Americans between the two world wars. It was the cultural phase of the "New Negro" movement, a social and political phenomenon that promoted a proud racial identity, economic independence, and progressive politics. In this Very...

TOWARD A LIVING ARCHIVE OF AFRICAN POETRY collects Kwame Dawes's and Chris Abani's introductory essays for the New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Box Set Series. These essays are conversations that celebrate the work of emerging African poets and build--meticulously and with principled care--a vision of...

The long overlooked, centuries-long, culture of the book in West Africa Printed books did not reach West Africa until the early twentieth century. And yet, between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, literate and curious readers throughout the region found books to read--books that were...