Voices From a Forgotten Letter

Voices from a Forgotten Letter: Poems on the Syrian Civil War explores the Syrian Civil War from the perspectives of civilians, Unique in the war canon because of its focus on civilians, this book will give you a perspective of war you have never seen before. The civilians range from the young to the old, from the educated to the working class, from refugees to the wives of soldiers. Each civilian has a deep psyche brought about by the author's ties to the region, undergraduate degree, travel in the region before the war, and extensive research.

"A record of a country and people in crisis rendered in fearless, anguishing detail." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

Praise for Voices From a Forgotten Letter:

A war correspondent of the imagination, Seif-Eldeine documents
the Syrian conflict in a relentless present-tense and austere
syntax reminiscent of Hemingway or Komunyakaa. These unforgettable
voices speak to us from the kitchens, bars, and curbside
jump rope games every bit as embattled as the front lines. What
they never do is lecture or hector: “No blackboard, no chalk”
begins “The Teacher at the Refugee Camp.” Nor do they censor
the manic hilarity that combat can unleash—“the sound of a gun
wasn’t it fun fun fun.” Eyes open to the “malevolent stars” presiding
over Syria since 2011, Seif-Eldeine has written a war-torn,
necessary book.
—Steven Cramer

Poets write “war poems” for a host of reasons: to witness, to
memorialize and commemorate, to celebrate, to lament, to
protest, to confront, to make sense, to make war’s abstraction
concrete, to document war’s extraordinary realities so they may
not otherwise be forgotten. Seif-Eldeine attends to these all with
grace, attentiveness, openness of heart, and skill. The result: poems
that give back dignity recklessly taken; poems that insist on
a new vision of reality, be it of the past, the present, or perhaps
most crucially of all, the future.
—Hayan Charara