In this episode, Kareem James Abu-Zeid, translator of the poems of Najwan Darwish in the new book from Yale University Press, No One Will Know You Tomorrow, talks with Terrain.org reviews editor Renata Golden.

Najwan Darwish has been described as one of the foremost Arabic language poets. In spare lyric verse, he testifies to the brutal and intimate traumas of war, the anguished fatigue of waking up each morning in an occupied land, and the immeasurable toll of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Born in Jerusalem in 1978, Darwish has published nine poetry books in Arabic. His works have been translated into more than 20 languages. Kareem James Abu-Zeid is a translator, poet, and teacher with a Ph.D. in comparative literature from University of California, Berkeley. No One Will Know You Tomorrow, which collects Najwan Darwish’s published and unpublished poems from 2014 to 2024, has been a finalist for numerous prizes, including the 2025 Walcott Prize for Poetry and the 2025 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.

Music: "Liftoff," by Nature Connection.

Photo by Nayef Hammouri, courtesy Shutterstock.