TEHRAN – Iranian poet Garus Abdolmalekian’s “The Middle East Trilogy: War, Love, Loneliness” (“Trilogia del Medio Oriente: Guerra Amore Solitudine”) has been published in Italian.

The book rendered into Italian by Faezeh Mardani and Francesco Occhetto was released by Carabba in Milan.

The book is perhaps the most intense poetic collection published so far, due to the language and depth of the themes expressed, the publisher has said.

The reference to war evokes the early years of the poet’s childhood marked by the tragic war between Iran and Iraq from 1980 to 1988, and recalls recent conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, in which he was emotionally involved. 

The narrative verse used by the author makes writing a privileged instrument of excavation, of surgical analysis both of the surrounding reality and of the inner universe of man.

“We must accept / that no soldier ever / has returned alive / from the war” reads a passage from this sad account of life.

Poems in the collection were composed between 2014 and 2018.

The front cover of the Persian edition bears a picture by Iraqi photographer Ali Fahdawi, depicting a girl from Mosul who was fleeing along with her family from ISIS forces. The publishing house purchased the copyright to the picture, which was later titled “Mona Lisa of Mosul”.

Abdolmalekian’s works have also been published in several other languages.

A selection of his works was published in Arabic in a collection named “A Bridge That Doesn’t Lead Anybody to Home” in Kuwait in 2020.

Asghar Alikarami is the translator of the collection released by Takween, a publishing house and bookshop in the country that has published works by world-renowned poets such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Anna Akhmatova, Sylvia Plath and Fernando Pessoa.

His poems have been translated into French, German, Kurdish and Spanish.

Abdolmalekian is presently the editor of the poetry section at Cheshmeh Publications in Tehran and the executive editor of publications at the Youth Poetry Office in Iran.

Penguin Books has published a selection of his poems in English in “Lean against This Late Hour” translated by Idra Novey and Ahmad Nadalizadeh.

A Swedish translation of a selection of his work was published in Sweden under the title, “Raderna Byter Plats i Morkret” in 2016.

Photo: Front cover of the Italian translation of Persian poet Garus Abdolmalekian’s “The Middle East Trilogy: War, Love, Loneliness”. 

MMS/YAW