Dunya Mikhail's Books

In Her Feminine Sign

By: Dunya Mikhail

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

A brilliant poetic exploration of language and gender, place, and time, seen through the mirror of exile In Her Feminine Sign follows on the heels of Dunya Mikhail's devastating account of Daesh kidnappings and killings of Yazidi women in Iraq, The Beekeeper. It is the first book she has written in both Arabic and English, a process she talks about in her preface, saying "The poet is at home in both texts, yet she remains a stranger." With a subtle simplicity and disquieting humor reminiscent of Wislawa Szymborska and an unadorned lyricism wholly her own, Mikhail shifts between her childhood in Baghdad and her present life in Detroit, between Ground Zero and a mass grave, between a game of chess and a flamingo. At the heart of the book is the symbol of the tied circle, the Arabic suffix taa-marbuta—a circle with two dots above it that determines a feminine word, or sign. This tied circle transforms into the moon, a stone that binds friendship, birdsong over ruins, three kidnapped women, and a hymn to Nisaba, the goddess of writing. A section of "Iraqi haiku" unfolds like Sumerian symbols carved onto clay tablets, transmuted into the stuff of our ordinary, daily life. In another poem, Mikhail defines the Sumerian word for freedom, Ama-ar-gi, as "what seeps out / from the dead into our dreams.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

Publisher

New Directions Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811228770

ISBN 13

9780811228770

The War Works Hard

By: Dunya Mikhail,Elizabeth Winslow

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The War Works Hard

By: Dunya Mikhail,Elizabeth Winslow

Mikhail’s poetic vision transcends cultural and linguistic boundaries with liberating compassion. Revolutionary poetry by an exiled Iraqi woman. Winner of a 2004 PEN Translation Fund Award. "Yesterday I lost a country," Dunya Mikhail writes in The War Works Hard, a revolutionary work by an exiled Iraqi poether first to appear in English. Amidst the ongoing atrocities in Iraq, here is an important new voice that rescues the human spirit from the ruins, unmasking the official glorification of war with telegraphic lexical austerity. Embracing literary traditions from ancient Mesopotamian mythology to Biblical and Qur'anic parables to Western modernism, Mikhail's poetic vision transcends cultural and linguistic boundaries with liberating compassion.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

100

Publisher

New Directions Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811225275

ISBN 13

9780811225274

The Iraqi Nights

By: Dunya Mikhail

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Iraqi Nights

By: Dunya Mikhail

A stunning new collection by one of Iraq's brightest poetic voices

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

Publisher

New Directions Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811222861

ISBN 13

9780811222860

Tablets: Secrets of the Clay

By: Dunya Mikhail

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Tablets: Secrets of the Clay

By: Dunya Mikhail

A gorgeous fusion of poetry and image by “one of the foremost poets of our time” (The Christian Science Monitor). “A bullet / then a siren / then ruins / then a bird song telling the truth”—Dunya Mikhail In her marvelous new poetry collection Tablets: Secrets of the Clay, Dunya Mikhail transforms the world’s first symbols—Sumerian glyphs that were carved onto clay tablets—into the matter of our everyday contemporary life. Each of the ten sections in her book is composed of twenty-four short poems, and each poem combines both text and drawing. In her note to the collection, Mikhail writes, “I practiced at least two layers of translation in these tablets: the first from words in one language, Arabic, to another, English; and the second from words to images. What I received from my ancestors are offerings of the future rather than of the past. Now it’s my turn to offer them to you.”

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

248

Publisher

New Directions Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811237982

ISBN 13

9780811237987

In Her Feminine Sign

By: Dunya Mikhail

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

In Her Feminine Sign

By: Dunya Mikhail

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

Publisher

New Directions Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811228770

ISBN 13

9780811228770

The War Works Hard

By: Dunya Mikhail,Elizabeth Winslow

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The War Works Hard

By: Dunya Mikhail,Elizabeth Winslow

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

100

Publisher

New Directions Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811225275

ISBN 13

9780811225274

The Iraqi Nights

By: Dunya Mikhail

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Iraqi Nights

By: Dunya Mikhail

A stunning new collection by one of Iraq's brightest poetic voices

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

Publisher

New Directions Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811222861

ISBN 13

9780811222860

The Bird Tattoo

A Novel

By: Dunya Mikhail

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Bird Tattoo

A Novel

By: Dunya Mikhail

A powerful and sweeping novel set over two tumultuous decades in Iraq from the National Book Award-nominated author of The Beekeeper. Shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Helen is a young Yazidi woman, living with her family in a mountain village in Sinjar, northern Iraq. One day she finds a local bird caught in a trap, and frees it, just as the trapper, Elias, returns. At first angry, he soon sees the error of his ways and vows never to keep a bird captive again. Helen and Elias fall deeply in love, marry and start a family in Sinjar. The village has seemed to stand apart from time, protected by the mountains and too small to attract much political notice. But their happy existence is suddenly shattered when Elias, a journalist, goes missing. A brutal organization is sweeping over the land, infiltrating even the remotest corners, its members cloaking their violence in religious devotion. Helen’s search for her husband results in her own captivity and enslavement. She eventually escapes her captors and is reunited with some of her family. But her life is forever changed. Elias remains missing and her sons, now young recruits to the organization, are like strangers. Will she find harmony and happiness again? For readers of Elif Shafak, Samar Yazbek's Planet of Clay, or Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad, Dunya Mikhail's The Bird Tattoo chronicles a world of great upheaval, love and loss, beauty and horror, and will stay in readers’ minds long after the last page.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

257

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1639362797

ISBN 13

9781639362790

The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq

By: Dunya Mikhail

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq

By: Dunya Mikhail

The true story of a beekeeper who risks his life to rescue enslaved women from Daesh Since 2014, Daesh (ISIS) has been brutalizing the Yazidi people of northern Iraq: sowing destruction, killing those who won’t convert to Islam, and enslaving young girls and women. The Beekeeper, by the acclaimed poet and journalist Dunya Mikhail, tells the harrowing stories of several women who managed to escape the clutches of Daesh. Mikhail extensively interviews these women—who’ve lost their families and loved ones, who’ve been sexually abused, psychologically tortured, and forced to manufacture chemical weapons—and as their tales unfold, an unlikely hero emerges: a beekeeper, who uses his knowledge of the local terrain, along with a wide network of transporters, helpers, and former cigarette smugglers, to bring these women, one by one, through the war-torn landscapes of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, back into safety. In the face of inhuman suffering, this powerful work of nonfiction offers a counterpoint to Daesh’s genocidal extremism: hope, as ordinary people risk their own lives to save those of others.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

215

Publisher

New Directions Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811226131

ISBN 13

9780811226134

Tablets: Secrets of the Clay

By: Dunya Mikhail

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Tablets: Secrets of the Clay

By: Dunya Mikhail

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

248

Publisher

New Directions Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811237982

ISBN 13

9780811237987

The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq

By: Dunya Mikhail

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq

By: Dunya Mikhail

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

215

Publisher

New Directions Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811226131

ISBN 13

9780811226134

The Bird Tattoo

A Novel

By: Dunya Mikhail

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Bird Tattoo

A Novel

By: Dunya Mikhail

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

257

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1639362797

ISBN 13

9781639362790

The Theory of Absence

缺席理論

By: Dunya Mikhail

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Theory of Absence

缺席理論

By: Dunya Mikhail

Following the convening of Hong Kong International Poetry Nights 2013, The World of Words is a collection of selected works by some of the most internationally acclaimed poets today. The poem of "The Theory of Absence" by Dunya Mikhail (Iraq) is finest contemporary poetry in trilingual or bilingual presentation.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

Publisher

香港中文大學出版社

Published Date

ISBN 10

9629966182

ISBN 13

9789629966188

Book's by Dunya Mikhail

In Her Feminine Sign

In Her Feminine Sign

The War Works Hard

The War Works Hard

The Iraqi Nights

The Iraqi Nights

Tablets: Secrets of the Clay

Tablets: Secrets of the Clay

In Her Feminine Sign

In Her Feminine Sign

The War Works Hard

The War Works Hard

The Iraqi Nights

The Iraqi Nights

The Bird Tattoo

The Bird Tattoo

The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq

The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq

Tablets: Secrets of the Clay

Tablets: Secrets of the Clay

The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq

The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq

The Bird Tattoo

The Bird Tattoo

The Theory of Absence

The Theory of Absence

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email