This is a comprehensive study of the most widely celebrated of twentieth-century Iraqi writers, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, whose premature death in 1964 from Lou Gehrig s disease (ALS) was lamented in cultural circles throughout the Arab world. This book makes available to English-speaking readers for the first time an unprecedented amount of information about a single Arab poet (including a large selection of previously untranslated poetry). In addition, it places the poet s work in the broader context of postcolonial resistance to Western hegemony, illuminating obscure aspects of his writing and relating it to other authors of his time."