The Sound and the Fury

Iraqi poet, novelist, translator and scholar Sinan Antoon was born and raised in Baghdad. 

- Antoon

Antoon is the author of five novels. He has published three collections of poetry in Arabic. His most recent work in English is Postcards from the Underworld (Seagull, 2023), a collection of self-translated poems. His translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s In the Presence of Absence won the 2012 National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). Antoon is currently associate professor at New York University. He spoke to Vineetha Mokkil about the necessity of telling the stories of people whose lives have been torn apart by war. Excerpts:

What drives you to write about lives affected by war? What kind of emotional toll does it take on you?

This has always been the challenge for writers and artists—to confront the pain fellow humans suffer and to engage with it. Our being would be impossible without narratives that structure the way we perceive our existence and our societies. The novels and works of art that I was moved by the most when I was younger and dreaming of becoming a writer were the ones that confronted the difficult and complex reality of the world. It’s a paradox and perhaps also a blessing that we can represent pain with beauty. Sad songs are sad, but still beautiful and pleasing.