MAHMOUD DARWISH (1941 – 2008) was an award-winning Palestinian poet and author who gave voice to the struggles of the Palestinian people. Hailed as the most gifted poet of his generation in the Arab world and widely regarded as the Palestinian national poet, he was described as incarnating and reflecting "the tradition of the political poet in Islam, the man of action whose action is poetry." For poet Naomi Shihab Nye, Darwish was "the essential breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging."
Over his lifetime, Darwish published more than 30 volumes of poetry. He assimilated some of the world's oldest literary traditions at the same time that he struggled to open new possibilities for poetry. His work shifts effortlessly between the most intimate individual experience and the burdens of history and collective memory. And while Palestine became a metaphor for the loss of Eden, the anguish of dispossession and sense of isolation, Darwish resisted classification as a spokesperson for the Palestinian cause, and refused to use his art for purely political ends.
A former member of the PLO's Executive Council, Darwish also wrote the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence and several books of prose—including the memoirs JOURNAL OF AN ORDINARY GRIEF (1973) and MEMORY FOR FORGETFULNESS (1987).
Darwish admired the Hebrew poet Yehuda Amichai, but described his poetry as a "challenge to me, because we write about the same place. He wants to use the landscape and history for his own benefit, based on my destroyed identity. So we have a competition: who is the owner of the language of this land? Who loves it more? Who writes it better?"
Among his many international awards were the Lotus Prize (1969), the Lenin Peace Prize (1983), the French medal of Knight of Arts and Belles Letters (1997), the wisām (order) of intellectual merit from Moroccan King Muhammad VI in 2000, and the 2001 Lannan Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom.
This is a thoroughly revised and updated version of an earlier torrent. The following books are in PDF and/or ePub format:
== POETRY ==
* A River Dies of Thirst [tr. Cobham] (Archipelago, 2009) – ePub + PDF * Adam of Two Edens (Syracuse, 2000) – PDF * Almond Blossoms and Beyond [tr. Shaheen] (Interlink, 2009) – PDF * Butterfly's Burden [tr. Joudah] (Copper Canyon, 2007) – PDF * If I Were Another [tr. Joudah] (FSG, 2009) – ePub + PDF * Mural [tr. Hammami & Berger] (Verso, 2017) – ePub * Music of Human Flesh [tr. Johnson-Davies] (Heinemann, 1980) – PDF * Psalms [tr. Bennani] (Three Continents, 1994) – PDF * Psalms [tr. Haddawy] (Jusoor, 1994) – PDF * Sand and Other Poems [tr. Kabbani] (Routledge, 2013) – ePub * State of Siege [tr. Akash & Moore] (Syracuse, 2010) – ePub * Unfortunately, It Was Paradise (California, 2013) – ePub + PDF * Victims of a Map, contrib. [tr. al-Udhari] (Saqi, 2005) – PDF * Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? [tr. Sacks] (2006) – ePub * Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? [tr. Shaheen] (2014) – ePub + PDF
== PROSE ==
* In the Presence of Absence [tr. Antoon] (Archipelago, 2011) – ePub * Journal of an Ordinary Grief [tr. Muhawi] (Archipelago, 2010) – ePub * Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982 [tr. Muhawi] (California, 2013) – ePub
