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."  
​                                                                                                                                                 – Kenyon Review
“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.”
​                                                                                                                               – Words Without Borders

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.”
​                                                                                                                              - The Rumpus
“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.”                                                                                                            
​                                                                                                                                 - The Electronic Intifada 

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."
​                                                                                                                             – Reader at Large website 
​“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."
​                                                                                                                                           – The Erie Reader 
​“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.”
​                                                                                                                             – Three Percent 

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)