The Book of Trivialities
In a series of evocative vignettes, celebrated Iraqi poet Majed Mujed lyrically traverses the fraught landscapes of beauty, longing and resistance in a country at war. The Book of Trivialities, originally written in the poet’s native Arabic, is beautifully rendered into English by award-winning translator Kareem James Abu-Zeid.Intricately fusing political and personal histories, these powerful lyric verses speak to the universal, undying quest for freedom that knows no borders or bounds. A profound, powerful sequence of verse from a poet who once lived through the heart of a revolution and now lives for the revolutionary heart of love.
A unique bilingual book which reflects the collaborative and creative process of writers and translators working across cultures.
Majed Mujed
Majed Mujed was born in Iraq in 1971 and has lived in Ireland since 2015. One of the founders of the Iraqi House of Poetry, he worked as a journalist and publisher in the Iraqi cultural press for twenty years. He has published five collections of poetry in Arabic and has garnered awards for his work from the Al Mada Cultural Foundation, Iraqi House of Wisdom and Iraqi Intellectuals Conference. In 2021, he was one of the inaugural recipients of a Play It Forward Fellowship from the Arts Council of Ireland. Kareem James Abu-Zeid, PhD, is a freelance translator of poets and novelists from across the Arab world who translates from Arabic, French and German. His work has won numerous awards and accolades, including the 2022 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation for the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish’s book Exhausted on the Cross (NYRB Poets, 2021). He is also the author of The Poetics of Adonis and Yves Bonnefoy: Poetry as Spiritual Practice (Lockwood, 2019). His most recent translation is Chaos, Crossing by Olivia Elias (WorldPoetry Books, 2022). The online hub for his work is www.kareemjamesabuzeid.com.