In Case of Fire in a Foreign Land
New and Collected Poems from Two Languages
Ariel Dorfman author Edith Grossman author Edith Grossman translator
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Duke University Press
Published:3rd Sep '02
£79.00
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A collection of poetry bearing witness to atrocities committed by the Chilean dictatorship, describing the realities and aftermath of terror.
In the world of Chilean poet Ariel Dorfman, men and women can be forced to choose between leaving their country or dying for it. The living risk losing everything, but what they hold onto—love, faith, hope, truth—might change the world. It is this subversive possibility that speaks through these poems. A succession of voices—exiles, activists, separated lovers, the families of those victimized by political violence—gives an account of ruptured safety. They bear witness to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of personal and social damage in the aftermath of terror. The first bilingual edition of Dorfman’s work, In Case of Fire in a Foreign Land includes ten new poems and a new preface, and brings back into print the classic poems of the celebrated Last Waltz in Santiago. Always an eloquent voice against the ravages of inhumanity, Dorfman’s poems, like his acclaimed novels, continue to be a searing testimony of hope in the midst of despair.
“[These poems] manage to speak with great directness of the . . . suffering and dread in his own country—and, by implication, in much of the world today—and yet to be maps of the imagination, the compassionate imagination. . . .Writing like this is a rare source of hope."—W. S. Merwin
"Ariel Dorfman’s testaments of pain and outrage are indeed poems. They will outlast the oppression, the torture, the misery of exile of which they tell. ‘Many are called’ to write of these matters, but ‘few are chosen.’ Dorfman is one of the few."—Denise Levertov
"As long as poems such as these are written and published, the Pinochets of the world cannot have the last say."—Breyten Breytenbach
Praise for Ariel Dorfman’s poetry:
"A deeply moving collection from one of Chile’s most important writers. . . .Stark and at the same time oddly radiant."—Margaret Atwood
ISBN: 9780822329510
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 608g
176 pages
Bilingual edition