Poetry
الناس في بلادي
Not translated into English
Salah Abdel Sabour · 1957
Synopsis
The poet's first collection, written in free verse in everyday language, with images that Routledge considers singular. The poem that gives the book its title presents, according to Britannica, a village preacher who reminds his listeners that death also carries off those who amass wealth and power. The most famous, “La Pendaison de Zahran”, evokes, according to Al Jazeera, one of the heroes of the Denshawai affair, whom the British occupier had executed.
Context
The collection appeared in 1957 (or as early as 1956), and it is regarded as the starting point of free verse in Egypt. It made its author's reputation, according to Arab World Books, and placed him among the renewers of modern Arabic poetry. Routledge notes what it owes to the European symbolists, Rilke and Baudelaire, and to the English poets, Donne, Yeats and Eliot. Al Jazeera regards the poem devoted to Zahran as the founding piece of the work. The American Research Center in Egypt holds a second edition, catalogued under 1962.
Who it is for
A collection of poems in Arabic, in free verse; no translation of the volume into French or English has been found.
Prizes and reception
The collection through which free verse entered Egyptian letters, and which brought its author to notice.
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