Nizar Qabbani

Nizar Qabbani was born in Damascus in 1923, into a family tied to the national movement. He dates his vocation to the suicide of a sister who refused an arranged marriage, and wrote his first verses at sixteen, on a school sea voyage to Rome. A law graduate of the University of Damascus in 1945, he entered the diplomatic service at once and served notably in London, until his resignation in 1966. He then founded his own publishing house in Beirut. The defeat of 1967 turned him towards political poetry, which earned him bans. He died in London in 1998.

In the catalogue 1

• Poetryقالت لي السمراءNizar Qabbani · 1944not translated into EnglishLiterature