Love and Resistance by Nizar Qabbani

Love and Resistance is a book of translated poems by Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani. The book's introduction chronicles Mr. Qabbani's life and explains the background, the social climate, and the circumstances from which each stage of his poetry emerged.

The translated poems are selected for their breadth of representation, their influence in the Arab world, and their poetic prowess. The book's first section includes eleven love poems; the second has nine political poems. The translated poems are supplemented with footnotes to explain words or names in their historical and cultural context.

 Nizar Qabbani was a diplomat, poet, and publisher whose work approached the sensitive subjects of eroticism, feminism, Arab nationalism, love, and religion. Much of his poetry speaks of the imprisonment that Arab society imposes on its women. Many of his political poems about Syria liken the country's colonization by France to the situation of Arab women.