Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.

Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured-the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.

Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.

How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.

About the Author

Mohammed El-Kurd is a writer, poet, journalist, and organizer from Jerusalem, occupied Palestine. He is the Nation's first-ever Palestine Correspondent and editor-at-large at Mondoweiss, the recipient of numerous honors and awards, and the author of the highly-acclaimed poetry collection Rifqa, which has been translated into several languages.

Reviews

Praise for Rifqa

"Mohammed El-Kurd's poetry is a home returned to us"
-aja monet

"These are poems that hurl themselves at the boundaries of what poems can do"
-Ahdaf Soueif

"A symbolic masterpiece"
-The New Arab

"Remarkable debut"
-Los Angeles Review of Books

"The words that Mohammed assembles in his poems are ... snatched from clouds"
-Mondoweiss

"We should be grateful that this is Kurd's first book rather than his last, and that we can look forward to many decades of poetic innovation from this extraordinarily multifaceted and politically engaged poet"
-Middle East Eye

Book Information
ISBN 9798888903155
Author Mohammed El-Kurd
Format Paperback
Page Count 128
Imprint Haymarket Books
Publisher Haymarket Books