Sinan Antoon

Sinan Antoon is an Iraqi poet, novelist, translator, filmmaker, and scholar. He is the author of Postcards from the Underworld (Seagull Books, 2023), Kama fi ‘l-Sama’ (approximately translated “As in Heaven”) (Dar al-Jamal, 2019), Laylun Wahidun fi Kull al-Mudun (approximately translated “One Night in All Cities”) (Dar al-Jamal, 2010), and Mawshur Muballal bil-Hurub (approximately translated “A Prism; Wet with Wars”) (Mirit Books, 2003). 

His self-translated book Wahdaha Shajarat al-Rumman (approximately translated “The Pomegranate Alone”) (Dar al-Jamal, 2010) was published by Yale University Press in 2013 as The Corpse Washer. It won the 2014 Best Arab American Book Award and the 2014 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.

Antoon’s novel Fihris (approximately translated “Index”) (Manshurat al-Jamal, 2016) was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. It was translated into English by Jonathan Wright as The Book of Collateral Damage (Yale University Press, 2019). 

Antoon translated Mahmoud Darwish’s In the Presence of Absence (Archipelago Books, 2011), winner of the 2012 National Translation Award. He also cotranslated Saadi Youssef’s Nostalgia, My Enemy (Graywolf, 2012) with Peter Money, and translated Ibtisam Azem’s novel The Book of Disappearance (Syracuse University Press, 2019). 

His essays and op-eds have appeared in the Guardian, the Washington Post, TheNation, TheNew York Times, and many pan-Arab newspapers and journals. His book The Poetics of the Obscene: Ibn al-Hajjaj and Sukhf (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) is the first study of the tenth century poet Ibn al-Hajjaj.

Antoon coproduced and codirected the documentary About Baghdad (InCounter Productions, 2004). He was a 2016–17 fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. Antoon studied English literature at the University of Baghdad and Georgetown University, and he earned a doctorate in Arabic literature from Harvard. He is an associate professor at New York University and a cofounder and coeditor of Jadaliyya.