Search results for ""author catherine cobham""

Poetry is the quintessence of Arab culture. In this book one of the foremost Arab poets reinterprets a rich and ancient heritage. He examines the oral tradition of the pre-Islamic poetry of Arabia and the relationship between Arabic poetry and the Qur'an, and between poetry and thought. He also assesses the challenges of modernism and the impact of western culture on the Arab poetic tradition. Stimulating in their originality, eloquent in their treatment of a wide range of poetry and criticism, these reflections open up fresh perspectives on one of the world's greatest - and least explored - literatures.

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Syrian poet Nouri al-Jarrah brings to life a story that can never again be lost in time after a single line in Aramaic on a tombstone fired his imagination. This inspiring epic poem awakens two extraordinary lovers, Barates, a Syrian from Palmyra, and Regina, the Celtic slave he freed and married, from where they have lain at rest beside Hadrian’s Wall for eighteen centuries, and tells their unique story. Barates’ elegy to his beloved wife, who died young at 30, is, however, not about mythologising history. With the poet himself an exile in Britain for 40 years from his birthplace of Damascus, the poem forges new connections with today, linking al-Jarrah’s personal journey with that of his ancient forebear Barates, who resisted slavery with love. Barates’ Eastern song also questions whether the young Celtic fighters, the Tattooed Ones, were really barbarians, as they emerged from forest mists to defend their hills and rivers and their way of life from the Romans, and died or lay wounded at the twisting stone serpent that was Hadrian’s Wall.

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This is the first critical monograph on Iraqi fiction, looking at the novel's coming of age in the 1950s Catherine Cobham and Fabio Caiani look in depth at a focussed number of authors who started writing in Iraq in or around the 1950s to explore a pivotal moment in Iraqi novel writing. In these writers' work, a transition is made from fiction that was mainly concerned with political and social matters to one which, while remaining engaged with society, is formally more adventurous and technically more mature. It fills a gap in the existing research in English on modern Arabic prose literature, which has barely begun to address the work of Iraqi novelists. It focuses on Gha'ib Tu'ma Farman (1927-1990), Mahdi Isa al-Saqr (1927-2006) and Fu'ad al-Takarli (1927-2008), plus a selection of works by Mahmud Ahmad al-Sayyid, Dhu al-Nun Ayyub and Abd al-Malik Nuri. It places authors in their literary - historical and socio-political context to show how external factors shaped the fiction of the time.

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