Amjad Nasser – författare

A Map of Signs and Scents is a collection of sixty poems by an acclaimed poet whose life and work span Middle Eastern and Western worlds, centuries past and the vivid present, the sweep of history and the intimacy of love. Born in Jordan in 1955, Amjad Nasser has lived and worked in Beirut, Cyprus, and London. His work reflects a nuanced view of the currents of history along which individual lives play out, putting him in conversation with such poets as C. P. Cavafy, Octavio Paz, and Derek Walcott. And yet, within his peripatetic life, Nasser has produced a corpus of work that, far from evoking the alienation possible in a life of motion, puts him in deep camaraderie with the world. Through fresh translations by the award-winning poets Fady Joudah and Khaled Mattawa, readers will experience the fascinating evolution of Nasser’s style through his prolific, highly praised career, starting with samples of the rich textures and fertile symbolism of his 1979 debut Praise for Another Café. In selections from subsequent works such as Climbing the Mountain since Gilead, The Strangers Arrive, and Life like a Broken Tale, readers will trace Nasser’s work as it develops into a mature style that, while more precise and direct, confidently encompasses broad horizons.

Adham wurde als junger Mann aus Hâmija ins Exil gezwungen, weil er an einem fehlgeschlagenen Attentat auf einen Militärherrscher teilgenommen hatte. Nach rund zwanzig Jahren im Westen kehrt er zurück in die Heimat. Er begegnet seiner Familie, Jugendfreunden, ehemaligen Kameraden und seiner ersten Liebe, vor allem aber setzt er sich mit seinem früheren Selbst auseinander, dem Menschen, den er zurückgelassen hat.Eine faszinierende Geschichte über politisches Engagement, Heimat, die Not des Exils und die Schwierigkeit der Rückkehr. Zeitlos und poetisch.

Yunus the Calligrapher, the hero of the novel "Here is the Rose," who is swallowed by the metaphorical whale, is an impressive character. He is a mixture of lover, rebel, adventurer, and dreamer who walks to his great goal, dragging with him all the other characters in the novel who see the truth about Yunus while he remains the only one who does not. Himself because he is, simply put, the Arab Don Quixote. Don Quixote had his faithful follower who alerted him to the truth of what was really going on, but who alerted Yunus? There is someone who presents himself, at the beginning of the novel, as if he were the writer, but we will know, without delay, that he is not him, and that is within the framework of an amazing narrative game in which poetry resides in the depths. A must-read novel to know what happened in an Arab time in which dreams (or illusions?!) lived as if they were facts and facts as if they were dreams.