Dr. Omar Sabbagh is a widely published poet and critic. His work has appeared in, amongst others, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, The London Magazine, Lighthouse, and Envoi. He has published several poetry collections with Cinnamon Press, including, But It Was an Important Failure and To the Middle of Love, as well as this debut fiction novella, Via Negativa — a parable of exile. His next collection with Cinnamon will be Morning Lit: Portals After Alia will be published in Spring 2022. He has published critical essays on a number of writers, including George Eliot, Lawrence Durrell, and Henry Miller. Omar has a PhD in English Literature from King’s College London and is presently an Assistant Professor in English at the American University in Dubai.

Yusuf is an inveterate observer of his native Beirut, that “city of whores and city of dames”, watching its bustle from a bar stool. But when one of his most promising students shows him several unfinished stories, Yusuf finds his life’s drift is about to hit rough water. The first prose work by respected poet Omar Sabbagh, this stunning, miasmatic novella draws the reader deep into a world where what goes on inside a person's head is more real and important than the world outside.