I Am the Wounded Victim of a Suicide Bomber presents a selection of poems, translated into English and including the Perisan texts, by Fazel Ahad Ahadi, a scholar and poet driven from his home in Afghanistan by the political and social disruptions that have beset his country since the mid-twentieth century. Drawing heavily on these years of warfare and domination by outsiders and by extremists, this collection highlights the struggles of Afghans to keep alive their individual and collective identities along with the loneliness and cultural dislocation of exile—conditions experienced by too many the world over. While Ahadi’s poems can be joyful and hopeful, most evoke the pain of separation and isolation mixed with the determination to endure, persist, and resist.
