Arabic, between Love and War

JESSICA'S PICK

Arabic, Between Love and War edited by Norah Alkharashi and Yasmine Haj, Trace Press, December 2025) is the result of a series of creative workshops and collaborations led by co-editors Norah Alkharashi and Yasmine Haj. Here, a cohort of translators working with/in Arabic gathered a wide range of poems that remind us of the necessity of beauty and refusal amid cultural genocide. Through this anthology, translation becomes a liberatory practice; a process that enables us to meet across cultures, languages, and liberation struggles. -JK

In Arabic, the word for love -  حب - is one letter shorter than the word for war - حرب -

Here, translators gather to perform an intimate labour, moving words from Arabic into English, or reversing such direction as language dissolves into cities, landscapes, or portals that open to rubble, or only air.

These poems reverberate in the space between there and here, silence and voice, original and translation, and the polarities of war and love.

"May the poems gathered here - in translation, and in their original voice - spark introspection, remedy, and acts of imagination in between."

Yasmine Haj, "To Speak with Each Other" (introduction)

George Abraham, Eman Abukhadra, Omar Aljaffal, Norah Alkharashi, Lamia Abbas Amara, Nour Balousha, Samar Diab, Najlaa Osman Eltoum, Miled Faiza (& Karen McNeil), Zeena Faulk, Ibrahim Fawzy, Daad Haddad, Yasmine Haj, Mayada Ibrahim, Rana Issa, Mahmoud Khudayyir, Hiba Moustafa, Suneela Mubayi, Mariam Naji, Ibrahim Nasrallah, Nashwa Nasreldin, Kamal Nasser, Nofel, Qasim Saudi, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Fadwa Tuqan.

Paperback | 146 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"