ISBN: 9780857427908

Hardcover: 126 pages
Publisher: Seagull Books, 2021
Language: English

The texts gathered in Ever Since I Did Not Die by Syrian-Palestinian poet Ramy Al-Asheq are a poignant record of a fateful journey. Having grown up in a refugee camp in Damascus, Al-Asheq was imprisoned and persecuted by the regime in 2011 during the Syrian Revolution. He was released from jail, only to be recaptured and imprisoned in Jordan. After escaping from prison, he spent two years in Jordan under a fake name and passport, during which he won a literary fellowship that allowed him to travel to Germany in 2014, where he now lives and writes in exile.

Through seventeen powerful testimonies, Ever Since I Did Not Die vividly depicts what it means to live through war. Exquisitely weaving the past with the present and fond memories with brutal realities, this volume celebrates resistance through words that refuse to surrender and continue to create beauty amidst destruction—one of the most potent ways to survive in the darkest of hours.

Translated by Isis Nusair.

Ramy Al-Asheq is a Berlin-based Syrian-Palestinian poet, journalist and curator. He has published five poetry collections in Arabic, and many of his texts have been translated into Bosnian, Czech, English, French, German, Kurdish, Polish and Spanish. He launched the German-Arabic magazine FANN in 2017, and was recently selected as a fellow at the Academy of Arts in Berlin and Academy Schloss Solitude.