Najwan Darwish and his translator, Kareem James Abu-Zeid, have won the 2022 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation for their recent NYRB Poets collection, Exhausted on the Cross. The book was selected from a shortlist of six that also included titles by poets from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Korea, Mauritius, Mexico, and Syria. Darwish and Abu-Zeid will split the £3,000 prize money.
The chair of the prize judges, Rosalind Harvey, said of the collection: “In its direct, stripped-back lines, [Exhausted on the Cross] demonstrates both the limits and the necessity of language, inviting us to ask, together, how we can move through and beyond suffering.”
To learn more about the award and read Abu-Zeid’s comments on the honor, click here.