Dhakirah lil-Nisyan ذاكرة للنسيان

Memory for Forgetfulness is an extended reflection on the invasion and its political and historical dimensions. It is also a journey into personal and collective memory. What is the meaning of exile? What is the role of the writer in time of war? What is the relationship of writing (memory) to history (forgetfulness)? In raising these questions, Darwish implicitly connects writing, homeland, meaning, and resistance in an ironic, condensed work that combines wit with rage.an resistance to occupation and siege.

''Memory for Forgetfulness is . . . a welcome event for anyone interested in learning more about Arabic literature in general and Palestinian literature in particular. . . . The book is at once a personal memoir, a work of history, a prose poem, and a political essay...an all-inclusive and fragmented text that defies traditional generic expectations...Through a juxtaposition of dream and reality, poetry and prose, past and present, Darwish probes issues that have been central concerns in his writing: the proper role of the intellectual at a time of war, the tensions between poetic and political expression, the relationship between memory and history.'' - World Literature Today