The American University of Beirut Press announced the publication of a new title in the Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Series for Arabic and Islamic Texts, a study that offers a fresh critical reading of the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, one of the most influential voices in modern Arabic literature.
This book explores the poetic narrative of Mahmoud Darwish and highlights its major characteristics, approaching his poetry as a growing, evolving, and transformative project. Rather than isolating particular phases or themes, the study examines Darwish’s poems as interconnected texts whose internal diversity reveals a continuous thread of development and renewal. Through close reading of the poems’ details and textures, the book seeks to illuminate the poetic perspective that informed Darwish’s work throughout his career.
Departing from the political readings that often dominate interpretations of Darwish’s poetry, the study also avoids treating his work as a documentary reflection of the Palestinian historical narrative. Instead, it focuses on the poetic dimension itself, exploring layers of meaning and aesthetic expression while resisting the reduction of poetry to historical reality.
The study aims to neither reinforce nor dismantle the mythic aura surrounding Darwish. The mythologizing of creative figures, it argues, belongs to the collective cultural consciousness rather than to individual scholarly works. Instead, the author grounds his critical vision in Darwish’s poems themselves, using them as the foundation upon which the study develops its analytical framework. Just as Darwish’s poems often give rise to new poetic visions, the chapters of the book unfold progressively to articulate a comprehensive interpretation of his work.
Through a critical dialogue with Darwish’s texts, the study engages deeply with his poetry while avoiding the imposition of rigid interpretations that might constrain the poet’s voice or question his intentions—an issue Darwish himself reflected upon in his poem “Assassination,” where he lamented the deliberate misreadings that can destroy both poetic expression and the poet’s persona.
The book is written by Dr. Khalil Al-Sheikh, university professor, scholar, critic, and translator, who received his PhD from Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University Bonn, Germany, in 1986. He has taught comparative literary studies in the Department of Arabic Language at Yarmouk University as well as at other Arab universities. Since 2020, he has served as Director of Education and Arabic Language Research at the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, bringing extensive scholarly expertise to this critical engagement with Darwish’s poetry.
About AUB
Founded in 1866, the American University of Beirut bases its educational philosophy, standards, and practices on the American liberal arts model of higher education. A teaching-centered research university, AUB has more than 790 full-time faculty members and a student body of over 9000 students. AUB currently offers more than 140 programs leading to bachelor’s, master’s, MD, and PhD degrees. It provides medical education and training to students from throughout the region at its Medical Center that includes a full-service 365-bed hospital.
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