After being shortlisted for the Griffith Poetry Prize earlier this year, Syrian poet Adonis won the prestigious Goethe Prize of Frankfurt-am-Maim in Germany for his lifetime body of work, with selected highlights appearing in our Margellos World Republic of Letters title: Adonis: Selected Poems, the first collection in English to cover the full stretch of his career and translated by Khaled Mattawa, the poet’s handpicked translator.  Born in Syria in 1930, Adonis is one of the most celebrated poets of the Arabic-speaking world. In this volume, the full span of Adonis’s career as a poet is brought to English readers for the first time. Adonis, who calls himself “the pagan poet” (once referred to by Edward Said as “today’s most daring and provocative Arab poet”), will accept the prize later this summer in Frankfurt.

And be sure to check out the New York Times profile by Charles McGrath from the poet’s tour around the US last fall.