Best of Mahmoud Darwish published in "Almond Blossoms ad Beyond"

Interlink Publishing Group, Inc.
46 Crosby Street • Northampton MA 01060-1804
Tel: (413) 582 7054 • Fax: (413) 582 7057
Publicity Contact: Moira Megargee, extension 202
mmegargee@interlinkbooks.com • www.interlinkbooks.com

Almond Blossoms and Beyond
by Mahmoud Darwish
translated by Mohammad Shaheen

“A brilliant poet—certainly the most gifted of his generation in the Arab world.”
—Edward Said

Almond Blossoms and Beyond is one of the last collections of poetry that the internationally acclaimed Palestinian exile poet Mahmoud Darwish left to the world. Composed of brief lyric poems and the magnificent sustained Exile cycle, Almond Blossoms and Beyond holds an important place in Darwish’s unparalleled oeuvre. It distills his late style, in which, though the specter of death looms and weddings turn to funerals, he threads the pulses and fragilities and beauties of life into the lines of his poems. Their liveliness is his own response to the collection’s final call to bid “Farewell / Farewell, to the poetry of pain.”

Mahmoud Darwish, (1941–2008) born in the village of al-Birweh, Palestine, authored over two dozen volumes of poetry and prose. When he died last summer, he was mourned throughout the world as the voice of the Palestinian people and the author of their official declaration of independence, and most importantly, a poet of the highest invention and beauty.

Mohammad Shaheen holds a PhD in English literature from Cambridge University. He is a professor of English at the University of Jordan where he teaches literary criticism, 20th-Century English, and Comparative Literature. He is the author of many articles and books, including E.M. Forster and the Politics of Imperialism and The Modern Arabic Short Story: Shahrazad Returns.

Almond Blossoms and Beyond
by Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Mohammad Shaheen
Interlink Books, an imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc.
Poetry • 6” x 9” • 128 pages
ISBN 978-1-56656-755-8 • $25.00 hardback

end