A River Dies of Thirst

A River Dies of Thirst lures its translator's imagination into several possibilities of form and lyric as testament to the mastery Darwish possessed in Arabic. Catherine Cobham's translations sway delicately between mystery and clarity, giving a rendition of the master's voice that should impress both those reading Darwish's work for the first time and those who are already familiar with it.' -- Fady Joudah * The Guardian *
'Darwish has given expression to his people's ordinary longings and desires.' The New York Times * New York Times *
‘Lyrical, imagistic, plaintive, haunting, always passionate and elegant – and never anything less than free.’ -- Naomi Shihab Nye
‘Rarely have the personal and the political been so plainly intertwined as in Darwish’s poetry, and this book is no exception.’ -- The Bloomsbury Review
‘Mahmoud Darwish is one of the greatest poets of our time. In his poetry Palestine becomes the map of the human soul.’ -- Elias Khoury
‘There are two maps of Palestine that politicians will never manage to forfeit: the one kept in the memories of Palestinian refugees, and that which is drawn by Darwish’s poetry.’ -- Anton Shammas
‘At the centre of A River Dies of Thirst is a series of exquisite love poems into which, perhaps more delicately than ever, Darwish again winds questions of identity, sexuality, language and metaphor.’ -- Electronic Intifada
‘Darwish's final poems are graced by a mood of disburdenment, a ghostly light-heartedness. It is as if the poet felt himself liberated at last from all his prior performances, or as if the long siege of history had momentarily lifted and set him free.’ -- The National
‘It is through the poetry of Darwish that one learns what it meant, and still means, to be a Palestinian with cultural roots that reach far back in time ... he fashioned a new literary Arabic that merged vernacular idioms with the classic language. His Arabic gave voice to the Palestinians who had been driven from their homeland, and with this voice Darwish created poetry of the highest order by any standard. He speaks for his people, but like all great poets he speaks for every human being.’ -- New York Review of Books
‘Darwish has given expression to his people’s ordinary longings and desires.’ -- New York Times
‘A River Dies of Thirst provides us with another opportunity to share reality with a writer who has always astonishingly made poetry the site of actuality – the poem as a place where thinking is forged. They precisely mark enormous emotional ranges with a single, pointed image; they make short lines of long wars; and they push us, as always, towards the seeking of meaning.’ -- Asymptote Journal