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
– 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
– 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 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
– The Complete Review
“Eltayeb’s first novel, Cities Without Palms, was an accomplished and interesting story of migration and loss.”
– Arabic Literature (in English)