Mourid Barghouti

The Oslo Accords finally allowed Barghouti to return to the West Bank, and in 1996 he returned to Ramallah after 30 years of exile. This event inspired his autobiographical novel Ra'aytu Ram Allah (I Saw Ramallah), published by Dar Al Hilal (Cairo, 1997), which won him the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in the same year. A second part of the novel entitled, I Was Born There, I Was Born Here, was written when he and his son, Tamim, made a visit to Ramallah.[2]

In an interview with Maya Jaggi in The Guardian, Barghouti was quoted as saying: "I learn from trees. Just as many fruits drop before they're ripe, when I write a poem I treat it with healthy cruelty, deleting images to take care of the right ones."[3]

English translations:

• Midnight and Other Poems, translated by Radwa Ashour, ARC Publications, UK, October 2008, ISBN 1-904614-68-X, ISBN 978-1-904614-68-5
• I Was Born There, I Was Born Here, Bloomsbury, 2011
• I Saw Ramallah Random House, Anchor Books, 2003-05-13 ISBN 1-4000-3266-0 and Bloomsbury, UK, ISBN 0-7475-7470-7 and the American University in Cairo Press (January 2003), ISBN 978-977-424-755-2
• A Small Sun, Poems translated by Radwa Ashour and W. S. Merwin, Aldeburgh Poetry Trust, 2003 paperback, Suffolk, UK, ISBN 0-9535422-2-X

Spanish translations:

• Medianoche (poetry), translated by Luis Miguel Canada, published by Fundacion Antonio Perez. UCLM, Cuenca, Spain, 2006, ISBN 84-8427-494-2 and ISBN 978-84-8427-494-0
• He visto Ramala, translated by Iñaki Gutierrez de Teran, published by Ediciones del oriente y del mediterraneo, Guadarrama, Spain, 2002, ISBN 84-87198-83-X and ISBN 978-84-87198-83-0

• Mourid Barghouti Official Website
• Mourid Barghouti: Bio, excerpts, interviews and articles in the archives of the Prague Writers' Festival
• Mourid Barghouti, "Viewpoint: I'm Palestinian - but where am I from?" BBC, 12 November 2011.
• I Was Born There, I Was Born Here: Review of Mourid Barghouti's book.