Divided Publishing

I have brought you a severed hand

£ 11.99
Buy in Europe UK
£ 11.99
Buy in Europe UK

I have brought you a severed handGhayath Almadhountrans. Catherine Cobham

£ 11.99

I have brought you a severed hand

Ghayath Almadhoun

trans. Catherine Cobham

Fluid and unselfconscious, Ghayath Almadhoun writes love poems in the shape of nightmares: I have brought you a severed hand is a surreal mix of absurd humour, heteroerotic lust and dead seriousness. Caught between two exiles, the one inherited from his Palestinian father and the one he chose and lives, Almadhoun attempts to explain water and tame hope.

  • 978-1-7398431-2-0
  • 21.6 x 13.9 cm
  • 144 pp.
  • Paperback
  • March 2025

About the author

Ghayath Almadhoun (born 1979, Damascus) is a Syrian-Palestinian poet who moved to Sweden in 2008. He has published five collections of poetry in Arabic, the latest being Adrenalin (Almutawassit, 2017) and I have brought you a severed hand (Almutawassit, 2024). In 2017, Adrenalin was translated into English by Catherine Cobham and published by Action Books. In 2023, Almadhoun curated, edited and translated the poetry anthology Kontinentaldrift: Das Arabische Europa (Verlag Das Wunderhorn and Haus für Poesie), which includes thirty-one Arabic poets living in Europe. The English translation of I have brought you a severed hand is published simultaneously by Divided in the UK and Europe and by Action Books in the USA. Almadhoun currently lives between Berlin and Stockholm. His work has been translated into nearly thirty languages.

Photo: Sina Opalka

About the translator

Catherine Cobham taught Arabic language and literature at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, for many years and was head of the department of Arabic and Persian from 2011 until 2021. She has translated the work of a number of Arab writers, including poetry by Adonis, Mahmoud Darwish, Ghayath Almadhoun, Tammam Hunaidy and Nouri al-Jarrah, and novels and short stories by Yusuf Idris, Naguib Mahfouz, Hanan al-Shaykh, Fuad al-Takarli and Jamal Saeed. She has written articles in academic journals and co-written with Fabio Caiani The Iraqi Novel: Key Writers, Key Texts (Edinburgh University Press, 2013).

Endorsements (3)

This book never misses the defiant beat of an exile’s haunted footing across wars, seas and memory. Almadhoun turns the genocidal logic of colonialism upside down, emptying out the crumbs of humanity and civilisation.

Don Mee Choi

Almadhoun uses every possible means of silence to make the total devastation palpable.

Alfred Schaffer

Many poets attempt to traverse the gulf between the experience of tragedy and the ability to relay its magnitude to anyone else. But few living have done it with such flourish, such sustained passion and formal precision as Ghayath Almadhoun.

Kaveh Akbar

Press (1)

Ghayath Almadhoun: Writing is my real homelandDimitra DidangelouThe Brussels Review10/10/2024

Rights

  • North America (Action Books)

Upcoming (1)

30 March Brussels Palestine: Ghayath Almadhoun and Sahar Mousa, La Bellone

Darryl

£ 11.99
Buy in Europe UK
£ 11.99
Buy in Europe UK

DarrylJackie Ess

£ 11.99

Darryl

Jackie Ess

Underneath the sharp satire and hilarious sexual irreverence this is a deadly serious book: a brilliant novel of a seeker, like The Pilgrim’s Progress refracted by queer internet culture.

Torrey Peters

Darryl Cook is a cuckold, and that’s exactly how he likes it. He has an inheritance that spares him from work, a manageable and seemingly consequence-free drug habit, and a lovely wife called Mindy who’s generally game for anything—and for as much of it as she can get. But after an accidental overdose and some serious oversharing, Darryl’s world begins to crack up. Tormented by what seems to be the secret truth in sex, and less assured of that secret’s form, Darryl steps into what used to be called real life . . . Darryl is a disarmingly funny and unabashedly intelligent look at a community of people parsing masculinity, marriage, sex (and love) on their own terms.

  • 978-1-7395161-7-8
  • 21.6 x 13.9 cm
  • 200 pp.
  • Paperback
  • February 2025

Endorsements (5)

Darryl crashes through the pieties of inclusive literature like a horny aurochs through an Apple Store. Jackie Ess’s vicious wit and humane soul refuse to settle for anything less than an enhanced interrogation of human frailty, here through the psychosexual evisceration of an ordinary, relatable guy who simply wants someone else to bang his wife. Who doesn’t? This book takes the raw power of the sentence seriously, which is the best way to be funny: Darryl is sprinting ahead of the reader, mooning, with knowledge they crave, and we must try our hardest to catch up. I was already breathless by page ten, my gut torn in half by horrified glee. I stayed awake all night reading and couldn’t work the next day. Jackie Ess is the best. Cuck rights!

Harry Josephine Giles

One of the best novels on the planet.

Kay Gabriel

Ess is what I might call a burgeoning cult literary figure, armed with an unmistakable lyric deadpan and a taste for provocative subject matter.

Stephen Ira, Poetry Project

What Darryl is looking for is a crisis of sufficient severity that it will cause him to feel real to himself.

Dominic Fox, Review 31

Jackie Ess’s debut novel is a smart, unexpected and extremely funny take on marriage, masculinity and desire, written from the perspective of a loser extraordinaire.

Lucy Scholes, Prospect

Press (4)

Foyles International Women’s Day Reading ListTorrey PetersFoyles Further Reading08/03/2025
Top 5 works of satire, chosen by writer and cultural mischief maker Jackie EssThe Big Issue, 16543222/02/2025
An extract from Jackie Ess’s ‘Darryl’Jackie EssLondon Review Bookshop Blog13/02/2025
The Culture: Our critics recommendLucy ScholesProspect13/02/2025

Rights

  • North America (Clash)