Anna Badkhen‘s upcoming essay collection for New York Review Books, Bright Unbearable Reality, has been included on the 2022 National Book Awards longlist for nonfiction along with nine other titles. The books were selected from a submissions pool of over 600 titles. To see the other books on the list, read about the awards judges, and view other 2022 NBA longlists, click here.
In addition, two recent NYRB titles have landed on the 2022 National Translation Award in Poetry shortlist: Najwan Darwish’s Exhausted on the Cross (NYRB Poets; trans. by Kareem James Abu-Zeid) and Dante Alighieri’s Purgatorio (NYRB Classics; trans. D. M. Black). You can read the shortlist citations for both books below:
Exhausted on the Cross
Exhausted on the Cross, Najwan Darwish’s second volume of poetry, is poignant, raw, unflinching, and deeply humane, infusing the sorrow and suffering of occupation and the human condition with a startling lyricism. Kareem James Abu-Zeid’s unforgettable translation in its stark, clean, yet melodic register, invites us into the complexity of Darwish’s poetry, the suppleness of his Arabic, and the uncompromising vision of resistance in the face of oppression that beats at the heart of this marvelous book.
Purgatorio
There is nothing middle-of-the-road about D. M. Black’s version of the middle book of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The translator’s every step is sure, evincing not only his sensitive ear for the cadences of blank verse but also his profound insight into the psychology of the poet as well as of his shades. Black shows great respect for Dante as both a craftsman and a thinker, and in so doing serves the reader as a uniquely competent guide to “that Mountain where the blade of Reason probes us.”
To read about the other two titles on the list, click here.