Praise for Chaos, Crossing by Olivia Elias
"The questions Olivia Elias raises in her poems are essential ones, and translated literature is an essential tool to help us all search for answers. I am grateful that a translator as empathetic as Kareem James Abu-Zeid has made it possible for us to think about these questions."  
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"To be violently displaced and made stateless means to remember in multiple languages, 'vocabulary dwindling dwindling.'" 
                                                                                                                                        - POETRY Magazine
Praise for Exhausted on the Cross by Najwan Darwish
“It's hard to read this book without passing checkpoints of humanity. Darwish, through Kareem Abu-Zeid's superb translation, forces us to be awakened to our own sense of loss; to our need for refuge."  
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“Here, in verse that is by turns incandescent, conflicted, playful, righteous, petty, vengeful, and never less than astonishing, Darwish offers a raw interrogation of his 'poetic obligations' and the spiritual and material cost of fulfilling them.” 
                                                                                                                              - World Literature Today

​“Politics takes on a broader meaning: from a mundane breakfast of oil and bread to the opulence of medieval Baghdad, Darwish's capacious vision affirms the plight of his people, but is never confined by it.”
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Praise for Nothing More to Lose by Najwan Darwish

​“Abu-Zeid achieves the exceptional, approaching Darwish’s poetry with a great deal of technical ambition and providing a spare, luminous translation.”
​                                                                                                                                                 – Kenyon Review
​“The translation is astonishingly dexterous, to the point where several poems read as if they'd been written in English. Abu-Zeid has a wonderful ear for rhythm, and a fine sense of effect.”
                                                                                                                                                  - NPR Books
 “I read every page. These are gorgeous, glorious poems: the translator has done a brilliant job.”
                                                                                                                                                              - Liz Bourke
“Kareem James Abu-Zeid’s exquisite translation conveys this shape-shifting voice with a casual, American tone which arrives at unexpected moments of musicality.”
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“With this collection of Najwan Darwish’s poetry—beautifully translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid--The New York Review of Books has made available to English-language readers the work of one of Arabic literature’s biggest new stars.”                                                                                                            
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Praise for The Mehlis Report and Confessions by Rabee Jaber

​“a lively, crystalline translation by Kareem James Abu-Zeid.”                                                                                                                                                                                                       - Public Books
​“And by this time, this novel, this elegy for a lost Beirut, past and future, this novel was carrying me to a place I had never been before.”
​                                                                                       - All Things Considered on NPR 
“The magic of Abu-Zeid’s translations is the smoothness, casualness.” 
​                                                                                                          - Cleaver Magazine
“With Confessions, alongside The Mehlis Report […], Abu-Zeid has made Rabee Jaber’s Beirut part of our imaginary landscape and added him to our constellation of fiction writers.”
                                                                                                         - World Literature Today
“Kareem James Abu-Zeid deserves praise for his stunning translation of a novel that depends as heavily on capturing 'atmosphere' as it does prose."
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​“Translator Kareem Abu-Zeid does an excellent job of crafting the book’s clear, understated tone.”
                                                                                                                                          – Full Stop

Praise for Dunya Mikhail’s The Iraqi Nights

“Throughout Iraqi Nights, the clarity of the images and the measured pace at which they unfold repeatedly crack the reader’s heart."
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​“The poems are of varying levels of ambition and size, but a singular voice remains constant, one that encompasses a staggering amount of history and condenses it into uncluttered, haunting work.”
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Praise for The Palm House and Cities Without Palms by Tarek Eltayeb

​“The Palm House is a rich novel of both Sudan in the time around the takeover by Omar al-Bashir as well as an immigrant's experiences in 1990s Austria. […] It is an accomplished and well-crafted work.”
                                                                                                                                      – The Complete Review 
“Eltayeb’s first novel, Cities Without Palms, was an accomplished and interesting story of migration and loss.”
                                                                                            – Arabic Literature (in English)