Book record
The Threshold
Iman Mersal
Translated from Arabic by Robyn Creswell
Iman Mersal’s The Threshold, translated by Robyn Creswell, gathers the Egyptian poet’s work in English as a selected volume, and the title is perfectly suited to her restless intelligence. A threshold is a place of entry, hesitation, exile, and transformation. Mersal’s poetry often feels plainspoken until the ground shifts beneath the sentence. Her work can move through motherhood, migration, memory, political disappointment, and the unheroic facts of daily life without theatrical inflation. Creswell’s translation keeps that tonal precision alive, allowing the poems to remain conversational and devastating at once. I would read this book for the way it makes crossing feel psychological as much as geographic. Mersal does not decorate uncertainty. She stands in the doorway and lets the reader feel how much is at stake.
- Publisher
- FSG Books
- Language
- Arabic
- Country
- Egypt