Mahmud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim and Adonis are amongst the leading poets in the Arab world today.

Victims of a Map presents some of their finest work in translation, alongside the original Arabic, including thirteen poems by Darwish never before published - in English or Arabic - and a long work by Adonis written during the 1982 siege of Beirut, also published here for the first time.

Abdullah al-Udhari was born in Taiz, Yemen, in 1941, and has lived in London since 1962. He studied classical Arab literature and Sabaean epigraphy at London University, where he also received a doctorate for his pioneering study, Jahili Poetry before Imru al-Qais [4000 BCE-500 CE], which established him as an authority on early Jahili literature. In 1974 he founded and edited TR, an Anglo-Arab literary and arts magazine. He is a literary historian, poet and storyteller, and his publications include , Victims of a Map, Voice Without Passport, The Arab Creation Myth and Modern Poetry of the Arab World.