Book record
Chronicles of Majnun Layla and Selected Poems
Qasim Haddad
Translated from Arabic by Ferial Jabouri Ghazoul, John Verlenden
Chronicles of Majnun Layla and Selected Poems, by Qasim Haddad and translated by Ferial Jabouri Ghazoul, John Verlenden from Arabic, brings Arabic-language poetry from Bahrain into English through Arabic love legend, selected lyric intensity, and the Majnun-Layla tradition as a live reservoir rather than a museum object. Because it is a selected volume, the book also has a curatorial task: to make one poet's range feel available without pretending to exhaust it. I would read it for desire, madness, devotion, and the way love stories keep changing when poems carry them forward, not as a fixed lesson about Bahrain. The best entry point is still the poem itself: the line that catches, the image that refuses to explain itself, the feeling that arrives before paraphrase. Chronicles of Majnun Layla and Selected Poems belongs in the translated poetry library because it brings Bahraini Arabic poetry into relation with one of the great mythic structures of longing.
- Published
- 2014
- Publisher
- Syracuse University Press
- Language
- Arabic
- Country
- Bahrain
- ISBN
- 9780815610373