Palestine is a microcosm of the world: wretched, raging, fraught, and fragmented. On fire. Stubborn. Ineligible. Dignified. The lens we lend the Palestinian reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else.
The world continues to witness perverse violence unfolding on our screens; broken limbs, homes and futures permeate our dreams. In this context of numbing horror, Mohammed El-Kurd writes a defiant elegy, an ode to the indelible existence of his nation, to the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal.
With lyrical precision, El-Kurd dissects ‘humanization’ as a deeply misguided tactic of the marginalized, revealing the perplexing logic at its heart: the desire to make humans out of humans. Rather than shrinking the scope of Palestinian humanity to victimhood, El-Kurd demands that friends and foes look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing condemnation and deference. Instead, solidarity with Palestine requires recognizing it as a universal cause, irreverently mocking the delusions of its oppressors, and building movements rooted in dignity.
Perfect Victims plunges into the depths of heartbreak to sculpt language for the brutality of genocide, resurfacing as a steady, inextinguishable flame.
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Praise for Rifqa
“Mohammed El-Kurd’s poetry is a home returned to us”
—aja monet
“These are poems that hurl themselves at the boundaries of what poems can do”—Ahdaf Soueif
“A symbolic masterpiece”
—The New Arab
“Remarkable debut”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“The words that Mohammed assembles in his poems are … snatched from clouds”
—Mondoweiss
“We should be grateful that this is Kurd’s first book rather than his last, and that we can look forward to many decades of poetic innovation from this extraordinarily multifaceted and politically engaged poet”
—Middle East Eye
Other books by Mohammed El-Kurd
Other books of interest
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Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
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Palestine: A Socialist Introduction
Edited by Sumaya Awad and brian bean -
Elite Capture
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Light in Gaza
Edited by Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, et al. -
Our History Is the Future
by Nick Estes