New poetry from one of Palestine’s most vital voices, these visceral poems, all written under the shadow of war, are a cry from the darkest corners of human existence.
From internationally acclaimed Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish, The Great Farewell brings together two urgent, luminous collections of poems written under the shadow of the first year of the Palestinian genocide. Composed between November 2024 and October 2025, this book represents a significant formal shift for Darwish, who channels his writing into mukhāṭabāt or “discourses,” a genre pioneered by the 10th-century Sufi figure Al-Niffari. Yet here, where every text begins as a kind of visitation with the urgent refrain “He said to me,” Darwish deftly strips the form of its traditional mystical character, forging a more earthly, visceral poetry centered on the raw realities of human existence.
Moving across the geographies of both Palestine and exile—from Haifa and Jerusalem to Aleppo and Baghdad, from the banks of the Bosphorus to the shores of the Aegean—the 300-plus poems of this book confront the devastation of shattered hope with aphoristic force and visionary breadth. Here, classical Arabic and Persian poems, Ancient Greek myths, Qur’anic and Biblical resonances, and contemporary folk songs all enter the same burning conversation. In Abu-Zeid’s supple translation, The Great Farewell becomes a book of stark beauty and moral radiance: a record of endurance, grief, and unextinguished dignity.
