Synopses & Reviews
Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian poet (1941 - 9 August 2008), was a friend. I was on Gorée Island when I learned of his death during the course of an open-heart intervention in Houston, America. We had been together a few weeks earlier in Arles, the south of France. Even at noon the foyer of the hotel where we stayed was as if drained of light by dusk. He knew how serious his condition was - it was either the very risky operation or the possibility of dying at any moment from an exploding aorta - and with an ironic smile he speculated about his chances of survival. That night, as the sun was setting in a yellow flood over the ancient open air Roman theater and as birds began singing the accumulated sweetness of a summers day, he publicly read one last time from his work. The poems were shot through by an ongoing conversation with death. Immediately after his passing, I started writing the above series as fragments of a continuing dialogue. In West Africa it was then the onset of the rainy season moving north, the ‘petit hivernage, when black-blue clouds would skitter and close the skies. . . .The journey continues and the conversation will carry on, in the attempt to look for Mahmoud Darwish among the words.
Breyten Breytenbach
New York, December 2008
Review
"Definitely a writer worth looking into, this creative powerhouse will give you some real literature to sink your teeth into."
Carpe Libris
"Voice Over is a short but affecting sequence, with a slightly experimental feel to it, its author trying to come to grips with the death of his friend and colleague through a variety of approaches. A beautiful little pocket-sized pamphlet-volume, it is well-worthwhile."
The Complete Review
"Breytenbach's passionate desire to know and serve the truth, whatever it may be and whomever it might offend, is deeply admirable."
The Washington Post
"The journey continues and the conversation will carry on, in the attempt to look for Mahmoud Darwish among the words."
Breyten Breytenbach
Synopsis
Hertzog Prize winner Breyten Breytenbach's imaginative and inspirational elegy to Palestine's greatest poet.
Synopsis
After Mahmoud Darwish's death in 2008, his friend Breyten Breytenbach was inspired to create this collection of poems honoring him. There is much fertile common ground the two poets share: a guiding empathy, an uncompromising commitment to truth and humanity, and a language- and dreamscape rooted in love and hope. Voice Over is Breytenbach's passionate and elegiac exploration "to look for Darwish among the words."
About the Author
An outspoken human rights activist, Breyten Breytenbach is a poet, painter, memoirist, essayist and novelist. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited around the world. Born in South Africa, he emigrated to Paris in the late ‘60s and became deeply involved in the anti-Apartheid movement. Author of Mouroir, A Season in Paradise, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, Dog Heart, The Memory of Birds in Times of Revo- lution, A Veil of Footsteps, among many others, Breytenbach received the Alan Paton Award for Return to Paradise in 1994 and the prestigious Hertzog Prize for Poetry for Papierblom in 1999 and for Die Windvanger (Windcatcher) in 2008.