I HAVE BROUGHT YOU A SEVERED HAND, Ghayath Almadhoun, Divided Books

poet Ghayath Almadhoun’s latest book of poetry I HAVE BROUGHT YOU A SEVERED HAND, translated from the Arabic by Catherine Cobham

Fluid and unselfconscious, Ghayath Almadhoun writes love poems in the shape of nightmares: I HAVE BROUGHT YOU A SEVERED HAND is a surreal mix of absurd humour, heteroerotic lust and dead seriousness. Caught between two exiles, the one inherited from his Palestinian father and the one he chose and lives, Almadhoun attempts to explain water and tame hope.

144pp, paperback

Ghayath Almadhoun (born 1979, Damascus) is a Syrian-Palestinian poet who moved to Sweden in 2008. He has published five collections of poetry in Arabic, the latest being ADRENALIN (Almutawassit, 2017) and I HAVE BROUGHT YOU A SEVERED HAND (Almutawassit, 2024). In 2017, ADRENALIN was translated into English by Catherine Cobham and published by Action Books. In 2023, Almadhoun curated, edited and translated the poetry anthology KONTINENTALDRIFT: DAS ARABISCHE EUROPA (Verlag Das Wunderhorn and Haus für Poesie), which includes thirty-one Arabic poets living in Europe. The English translation of I HAVE BROUGHT YOU A SEVERED HAND is published simultaneously by Divided in the UK and Europe and by Action Books in the USA. Almadhoun currently lives between Berlin and Stockholm. His work has been translated into nearly thirty languages.

Catherine Cobham taught Arabic language and literature at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, for many years and was head of the department of Arabic and Persian from 2011 until 2021. She has translated the work of a number of Arab writers, including poetry by Adonis, Mahmoud Darwish, Ghayath Almadhoun, Tammam Hunaidy and Nouri al-Jarrah, and novels and short stories by Yusuf Idris, Naguib Mahfouz, Hanan al-Shaykh, Fuad al-Takarli and Jamal Saeed. She has written articles in academic journals and co-written with Fabio Caiani THE IRAQI NOVEL: KEY WRITERS, KEY TEXTS (Edinburgh University Press, 2013).