Revolt Against the Sun: The Selected Poetry of Nazik al-Mala’ika: A Bilingual Reader

The Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala’ika was one of the most important Arab poets of the twentieth century. Over the course of a four-decade career, her contributions to both the theory and the practice of free verse (or tafʿilah) poetry confirmed her position as a pioneer of Arab modernism.Revolt Against the Sun presents a selection of Nazik al-Mala’ika’s poetry in English for the first time. Bringing together poems from each of her published collections, it traces al-Mala’ika’s transformation from a lyrical Romantic poet in the 1940s to a fervently committed Arab nationalist in the 1970s and 1980s. The translations offer both an overview of her life and work, and an insight into the political and social realities in the Arab world in the decades following...