Iman Mersal

Ostensibly a biography, this book is more an intellectual auto-biography and detective story. The author, Iman Mersal, a poet, intellectual, and a terrific writer and story teller, becomes obsessed with a young Egyptian women who was also a writer and who died by suicide.

Through research and interviews she tries to uncover the biography of Enayet, shrouded by time in obscurity. The story unfolds in a spiral, circling around the core event of Enayat’s suicide. As layers of the story are uncovered, and the spiral circles deeper and deeper, it becomes clear that the protagonist is the author herself, trying to understand and come to grips with her own inner shadows.

Steeped in the intellectual world of her academic life and the political ideologies of her youth, Mersal attempts to box Enayat in, to uncover the “true” story of her life.. But her deep connection to Enayet’s spirit allows her and Enayet to break out from the constricting bounds of society, ideology and culture, and tell a moving story of human spirit yearning to create and be free.… (mais)

This volume has poems in Arabic and their English translations on facing pages. Which is interesting, because even single-word and short lines with the same word don't match in the Arabic, which obviously means some thing about tense and structure and word order.

Some of these are excellent, as in any anthology. My favorite was by Saadiah Murfarreh (Kuwait). Other standouts for me were Flying by Iman Mersal (Egypt) and The Key by Ines Abassi (Tunisia).

Many (but not all) of these poems have a consistent theme of war--whether it be fear, uncertainty, prison camps, loss (of life or land).… (mais)

I am not sure how to feel about this book.

It was steeped in grief and melancholy and lots of talk of death without necessarily being sad or emotional. Reading this feels like sifting through someone's memories and seeing what's left in your hands after all the sand has fallen through.

My favourite part of this poetry book was when she was in Alberta -- I am a recent immigrant from Australia so I love immigrant stories and love to see how other people handle dualities that I have too. I loved her poems about suffocating accents and some of the lines in her poems were just lovely.

Unfortunately though, despite my excitement about reading this book, I think there was just something lost in the translation. Something lost in the language. I just felt that I missed something. If you do want to read this collection, if it's available in Arabic, I would pick it up and see how that goes.… (mais)