Al-Shabbi lived his entire life (19091934) in French colonial Tunisia and died when the anti-colonial struggle for independence started to take shape both in intellectual cafes and party politics. His verses drew on the magical beauty of nature to underscore the sanctity of human life and incite revolt against colonial oppression. His legacy as a revolutionary icon has been acknowledged in the Tunisian anthem and cemented by the slogans drawn from his poetry during the Arab Uprisings (20102011). A rebel by nature, his earliest pamphlet constituted nothing less than a manifesto for rebellion against the obsolete Arab poetic regimes of the imagination. Ronak Husnis translation of Arab Poetic Imagination is a much-needed contribution to the repertoire of the Arabic library in English. Husni translates with grace and rigor and offers a thorough introduction to the life and work of Al-Shabbi. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in Arabic poetry, modern or premodern.
Nouri Gana, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
With Ronak Husnis fluid and engaging translation, Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbis (190934) classic formulation of Arab Romanticism, The Arab Poetic Imagination, becomes available for the first time to the reader of English. Although the Western public was first alerted to al-Shabbi when his stirring ode Will to Life became the slogan of the 2011 Arab Spring, the great Tunisian Romantic poet and critic has long been renowned in literary circles. Husnis adept introduction provides a biography of the author, the literary and cultural context of the work, and its critical reception. The Arab Poetic Imagination can now take its due place in the critical re-evaluation of Arab Romanticism within a broad comparative context, whether in the academy or the classroom.
Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Professor of Arabic & Islamic Studies, emerita, Georgetown University.
Ronak Husnis first complete English translation of the Tunisian poet Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbis The Arab Poetic Imagination represents a major addition to the body of Arabic literary criticism available to the English-speaking reader. Students of the Romantic movement and of comparative literature will find much of interest in al-Shabbis work, which has long enjoyed a reputation in the Arab world as a seminal text of modern Arabic literary criticism. With the publication of Ronak Husnis translation, together with her comprehensive introduction to its literary context, this pioneering work now has an opportunity to find its way to a wider audience, enabling a fuller understanding of al-Shabbis place in the development of Arabic Romantic poetry and criticism in the early twentieth century.
Paul Starkey, Emeritus Professor, Durham University, UK.
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