In CAIRO: the undelivered letters, the city speaks—but only through those the world forgets. Framed as a haunting series of letters to an absent editor at Al-Ahram Newspaper’s Friday Mail, this poetry collection refracts the lives of Cairo’s demimonde through a surreal, shimmering lens. From flooded basements to rooftop vigils, from broken radios to whispered revolutions, each plea is a cracked mirror reflecting a city unraveling and remaking itself in silence. In the void where replies should be, CAIRO: the undelivered letters dares to imagine that even unread voices echo—tender, urgent, and impossible to ignore.
Mai Serhan
Cairo: The Undelivered Letters is published by Diwan.
Mai Serhan
Mai Serhan is a Cairo-based Palestinian writer, editor and translator. She is the author of I Can Imagine It For Us, a finalist for the 2022 Narratively Memoir Prize and forthcoming with AUC Press and CAIRO: the undelivered letters, winner of the 2022 Center... Read more
Mai Serhan
Mai Serhan is a Cairo-based Palestinian writer, editor and translator. She is the author of I Can Imagine It For Us, a finalist for the 2022 Narratively Memoir Prize and forthcoming with AUC Press and CAIRO: the undelivered letters, winner of the 2022 Center for Book Arts Poetry Award. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming with The Adroit Journal, The Michigan Quarterly Review, The London Magazine, Magma Poetry, Flash Fiction Magazine, the Journal of Palestine Studies, amongst others. She’s a graduate of the University of Oxford's creative writing master's degree program. Read less
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