Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?

Praise

Darwish is the premier poetic voice of the Palestinian people . . .lyrical, imagistic, plaintive, haunting, always passionate, and elegant – and never anything less than free – what he would dream for all his people. —Naomi Shihab Nye

A book of nostalgia and love . . . The book tugs at the reader’s heart page after page, poem after poem, line after line, you cannot remain apathetic for a moment . . . Only a very callused person could read these poems without getting emotional. —Haaretz

In this definitive Palestinian history, Mahmoud Darwish is turning his personal biography into a modern, low-keyed national epic. In the morning after Oslo, Darwish said “the Palestinians woke up only to find out that they had no past.” But we, the survivors of that mnemectomy, the readers of this Horse, will always know that there are two maps of Palestine that politicians will never manage to forfeit: the one kept in the memories of Palestinian refugees, and that which is drawn by Darwish’s poetry. —Anton Shammas

Darwish’s complex linguistic negotiations of deeply contested places, on the earth and in the mind, demand and sustain serious reading and discussion. —Publishers Weekly