Abundance from the Desert by AUK's Raymond Farrin Published in Arabic

In partnership with Dar Al-Farasha of Kuwait, Beirut's publishing house Dar Al-Farabi has published the Arabic translation of Abundance from the Desert: Classical Arabic Poetry by AUK's Associate Professor of Arabic Raymond Farrin.

Abundance from the Desert was first published in English by Syracuse University Press (2011). The book introduces classical Arabic poetry to a Western audience, presenting a number of major works from various time periods, regions, and genres and discussing each one in its context. In addition, the book marks an important step forward in the study of Arabic poetry, highlighting the incidence in this tradition of ring composition (a method of composition similar to the arrangement of a necklace, whereby the end is connected to the middle, and the most significant part lies in the middle).

"As I was writing Abundance from the Desert, I realized that the book might well interest an Arab reader, particularly because this approach to analyzing early poetry is not well known in the field of Arabic literature. I resolved then to translate the book into Arabic," commented Dr. Farrin, adding, "The translation was not an easy project-it ended up taking me almost four years-though I hope it was a worthwhile one. I am grateful for AUK's support of the project and for the editing by Kuwaiti poet Dalal Al-Baroud. Now that the Arabic version has come out," he says, "I am more proud of it than I am of the English version, which was my first published book."

Raymond Farrin received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. He studied Arabic in Cairo before specializing in classical Arabic poetry at Berkeley. He has been on the AUK faculty since 2006.

Released by the Office of Public Affairs on the 7th January 2013