Anton Shammas

A Palestinian writer and translator of Arabic, Hebrew and English, Anton Shammas has been teaching Arabic and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, since 1997. He is the author of three books of poetry (in Hebrew and Arabic); two plays; many essays in English, Hebrew and Arabic; and a novel, Arabesques, originally published in Hebrew (1986) and translated into eight languages. Upon its American publication in 1988, Arabesques was chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of that year’s best seven fiction works. Shammas’ essays, on the current cultural and political scene in the Middle East, and on his linguistic autobiography in between three languages, have been published in Harper’s Magazine, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Magazine. He has translated from and into Arabic, Hebrew and English, playwrights, writers and poets such as: Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, Athol Fugard, Dario Fo, Emile Habiby, Mahmoud Darwish, and Taha Muhammad Ali.