The Silence that Remains: Selected Poems 1982-2003

Zaqtan is one of the most original and compelling Palestinian poets of his generation. A novelist, editor, playwright, and filmmaker, he has written ten books of poetry, including Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, awarded the Griffin International Poetry Prize in 2013. This book introduces readers in English to Zaqtan's early work, including his debut collection destroyed during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Writing about personal memory as a form of political and social activism, while avoiding the mythology of exile and displacement, Ghassan creates an aesthetic of fragments, an imaginative archaeology of fragile human subjects. It's a book about the silence of the tongue and the silence of the heart, the silence of resistance and the resistance of silence. Zaqtan was born near Bethlehem in 1954 and has lived in Jordan, Beirut, Damascus and Tunis. He is a founding director of the House of Poetry in Ramallah. His poetry and fiction has been translated into many languages. He has won the Mahmoud Darwish Literary Award and in 2013 was awarded the National Medal of Honor.