Saadi Youssef was born near Basra, Iraq, in 1934.
He started writing poetry at the age of 17 and has published 32 collections, a volume of short stories, two novels, several essays, and four volumes of his collected works. Twice exiled from Iraq, he has lived in many countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe before settling in the U.K. in 1999.
He has translated major international poets from English into Arabic, including Walt Whitman, C. P. Cavafy, Yannis Ritsos, Federico Garcia Lorca, Vasco Popa, and Ungaretti, as well as novels by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Wole Soyinka, Nuruddin Farah, George Orwell, David Malouf, Per Lagerkvist and V.S. Naipaul.
His first major English collection, Without an Alphabet, Without a Face, translated by Khaled Mattawa, was published in 2002 by Graywolf Press and won the 2003 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.
Saadi Youssef is a member of the Editorial Board of Al-Thaqafa Al-Jadida, a well-known Iraqi Leftist cultural review. He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for PEN International magazine and a contributing editor of Banipal magazine.
A selection of poems from Without an Alphabet, Without a Face was published in PEN America 5: Silences.
|
|
