Adonis

Adonis is one of the most celebrated poets and essayists of the Arab world. Born in Syria in 1930, he fled political persecution and settled in Lebanon in the 1950s, where he led the modernist movement in Arabic poetry. He has written more than thirty books in Arabic, including Sufism and Surrealism, and the pioneering work An Introduction to Arab Poetics, and was awarded the Goethe Prize in 2011 for his contribution to international literature. His other awards include the Spiros Vergos Prize for Freedom of Expression, the Bjørnson Prize, the International Nâzım Hikmet Poetry Award and the Syria-Lebanon Best Poet Award. He lives in Paris.

‘Adonis is today’s most daring and provocative Arab poet, a symbolist and surrealist who is like a combination of Montale, Breton, Yeats, and the early T. S. Eliot.’ Edward Said