Describing the Past

When he was seven years old, Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan moved with his family to a Karameh refugee camp east of the River Jordan. That camp--a center of Palestinian resistance following the Six-Day War and the site of major devastation when Israel razed the camp following the Battle of Karameh in 1968--is the setting for Zaqtan's first prose work to appear in English, Describing the Past.

This novella is a coming of age story, a tale of youth set amid the death and chaos of war and violence. It is an elegy for the loss of a childhood friend, and for childhood itself, brought back to life here as if dreams and memories have merged into a new state of being, an altered consciousness and way of being in and remembering the world.

Author: Ghassan Zaqtan
Publisher: Seagull Books
Published: 07/15/2016
Pages: 80
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 8.10h x 4.90w x 0.60d
ISBN13: 9780857423498
ISBN10: 0857423495
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | General

About the Author
Ghassan Zaqtan is a Palestinian poet, novelist, editor, and playwright. Samuel Wilder is a translator, writer, and researcher of comparative poetics.