Divided Publishing

I have brought you a severed hand

£ 11.99
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£ 11.99
Buy in Europe UK Australia

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
  • 24 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 (4)

Book of the Week: Ghayath Almadhoun, I have brought you a severed handPalFestPalestine Festival of Literature24/07/2025
Ghayath Almadhoun: Europe, we love your art and hate your bombsDritan KiçiThe Brussels Review24/05/2025
On Ghayath Almadhoun’s ‘I have brought you a severed hand’Toby ÜpsonThe Yellow Paper07/05/2025
Ghayath Almadhoun: Writing is my real homelandDimitra DidangelouThe Brussels Review10/10/2024

Upcoming (2)

08 November Melbourne Ghayath Almadhoun in conversation at Un Projects with Azza Zein
06 November Melbourne Ghayath Almadhoun interviewed by Ender Baskan at Readings, Carlton

Bourgeois Coldness

£ 13.99
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£ 13.99
Pre order in rile* books

Bourgeois ColdnessHenrike Kohpeißtrans. Grace Nissan

£ 13.99

Bourgeois Coldness

Henrike Kohpeiß

trans. Grace Nissan

Bourgeois coldness refers to an affective strategy that offers an explanation for how self-preservation works. Bourgeois coldness is one of the most advanced affective and aesthetic forms of preserving the structure of the colonial status quo. It creates an affective shelter in the world, unencroached upon by the immediate consequences of its many catastrophes. It functions like air conditioning – a complex technology which reliably stabilises the climate until those inside consider it natural. Bourgeois spaces – institutional and affective – stay cool and pleasant. But outside it’s burning.

Canonical critical theory by Adorno and Horkheimer enters a dialogue with Black studies through Hartman and Moten.

  • 978-1-7395161-2-3
  • 21.6 x 13.9 cm
  • 280 pp.
  • Paperback
  • September 2025

About the author

Henrike Kohpeiß is a philosopher in Berlin, working on social and political philosophy, critical theory, affect studies, Black studies and feminist philosophy. She regularly publishes work in academic journals and criticism in magazines. She organises and hosts events in Berlin, such as the conversation series ‘Feelings at the end of the world’ at Volksbühne. Bourgeois Coldness is her first book, and was published in German in 2023 by Campus Verlag.

Photo: Inke Johannsen

About the translator

Grace Nissan is the author of The Utopians (Ugly Duckling Presse) and The City Is Lush With / Obstructed Views (DoubleCross Press), as well as the translator of War Diary by Yevgenia Belorusets (New Directions) and kochanie, today i bought bread by Uljana Wolf (World Poetry Books). Their translations of Yevgenia Belorusets were presented in the 59th Venice Biennale, as well as in the accompanying publication In the Face Of War (Isolarii). They are the recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Translation Fellowship to translate the Austrian poet Ann Cotten’s Banned! An Epic Poem into English.

Endorsements (2)

Foregrounding affect, this timely book provides an inestimable philosophical argument for the centrality of Blackness in critical examinations of capitalism’s violence.

Denise Ferreira da Silva

Elegant and erudite in equal measure, this book will stand as a landmark diagnosis of the practices of denial in our time.

Andreas Malm

Press (2)

Eine Kälte, die das Leben gut durchwärmtMartin Hartman Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2711021/11/2023
The Colonial Lives of Bourgeois ColdnessHenrike Kohpeiß and Jonas BensAffect and Colonialism Web Lab21/03/2023

Upcoming (4)

10 November Amsterdam Henrike Kohpeiß launch
06 November London Book launch Bourgeois Coldness, Historical Materialism
04 November London Bourgeois Coldness launch, Housmans Bookshop
02 October Stockholm Henrike Kohpeiß launches Bourgeois Coldness, Nord Books