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Front Cover
Back Cover
Fate the Hunter: Early Arabic Hunting Poems
Authors:
James E. Montgomery (translator)
,
Alice Oswald (foreword)
,
Richard Sieburth (editor)
Series:
Library of Arabic Literature
ISBN:
9789376540211
Binding:
Hardcover
Year:
2027
Pages:
192
Size:
15 x 23 x 2 cm
Weight:
395 grams
Price:
INR
1295.00
About the Book
A rich anthology of pre-Islamic and early Islamic poetry on the beauties and perils of the hunt.
In the poems of
Fate the Hunter
, many of them translated into English for the first time, trained cheetahs chase oryx, and goshawks glare from falconers’ arms, while archers stalk their prey across the desert plains and mountain ravines of the Arabian peninsula. With this collection, James E. Montgomery, acclaimed translator of
War Songs
by ʿAntarah ibn Shaddād, offers a new edition and translation of twenty-six early works of hunting poetry, or
ṭardiyyāt
. Included here are poems by pre-Islamic poets such as Imruʾ al-Qays and al-Shanfarā, as well as poets from the Umayyad era such as al-Shamardal ibn Sharīk. The volume concludes with the earliest extant epistle about hunting, written by ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Kātib, a master of Arabic prose.Through the eyes of the poet, the hunter’s pursuit of the quarry mirrors Fate’s pursuit of both humans and nonhumans and highlights the ambiguity of the encounter. With breathtaking descriptions of falcons, gazelles, and saluki gazehounds, the poems in
Fate the Hunter
capture the drama and tension of the hunt while offering meditations on Fate, mortality, and death.
About the Authors
James E. Montgomery
James E. Montgomery is Sir Thomas Adams’s Professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity Hall. His three most recent books of hunting poetry are
A Demon Spirit
,
In Deadly Embrace
, and
Fate the Hunter
. In 2024 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy.
Alice Oswald
Alice Oswald is the author of eight books of poetry, including
Memorial
and
Falling Awake
, and winner of the Costa Poetry Award and Griffin Poetry Prize. Elected as the University of Oxford Professor of Poetry in 2019, she lives in Bristol, United Kingdom.
Richard Sieburth
Editorial Reviews
“Twenty-six muscular, animal-centered works . . . timeless poems of man and nature.”
—
Esquire Middle East
“
The Workings of Fate
, by Sakhr Al-Ghayy, translated by James Montgomery. This Arabic hunting poem is ideal for a grey day, recharging me with what Beckett calls ‘the pitiless light of that which hope hides’. It’s a list of animal deaths laid out like offerings before the death of a human.”
—Alice Oswald,
The Guardian
Customer Reviews
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