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Poems of loss and liberation, the body and the human spirit: the astonishing debut collection from Palestinian poet Batool Abu Akleen

‘In this book, I am collecting the parts of myself I have found, in case there isn’t anyone there to do so if I am killed.’

Each of the forty-eight poems assembled in this startling bilingual collection represents a single kilogram of a body’s mass. In spare, stark language, Abu Akleen writes of a city under siege and a self under constant assault, articulating the personal and the public in the midst of unspeakable violence. 48kg immortalizes her voice and, in doing so, reaches out for a space of shared humanity.

‘One of the most viscerally affecting collections of poems I have ever read. Devastatingly precise and unforgettable images emerge from every line… What is happening in Gaza is a genocide not a war, but not since Akhmatova have I read poetry that so potently reckons with the relationship between war and the body. They create a new category of literary grace out of the cataclysm. These are poems of fire and agony, bombing and starvation, but they are also poems of grace, cleverness, tenderness and yearning. A great international poet arrives with this collection, but it is also a landmark work of resistance. No human should have to write their poetry from inside death's dominion, but Batool Abu Akleen has done it, and the result is truly astonishing.’ ―Max Porter

Translated from Arabic by the poet (with Graham Liddell, Wiam El-Tamami, Cristina Viti and Yasmin Zaher), edited by Dominic J. Jaeckle and Cristina Viti, and published in collaboration with Tenement Press.

Batool Abu Akleen (Author)

Batool Abu Akleen is a Palestinian poet and translator from Gaza City. At the age of fifteen, 2020, she won the Barjeel Poetry Prize, and her work has been translated into several languages and featured in numerous international publications. Abu Akleen was Modern Poetry in Translation ‘Poet / Translator in Residence,’ 2024, and is one of the four Gazan authors included in Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide (Comma Press, 2025).

She has performed her poetry at the Venice Biennale, 2026, and her work has been featured as a Palestine Festival of Literature ‘Bookshelf’ selection, Summer 2025, and a New Statesman ‘Book of the Year.’ Following her evacuation from Gaza, Autumn 2025, Abu Akleen is concluding her studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris.

Graham Liddell (Translator)

Graham Liddell is a writer, translator, and scholar of modern Middle Eastern literature. His translations from Arabic have appeared in ArabLit Quarterly, The Stinging Fly, and Banipal, among other publications. In 2022, he edited Orphaned of Light: Translating Arab and Arabophone Migration, a book-length issue of the literary translation journal Absinthe. A recent recipient of a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan, Liddell wrote a dissertation comparing the ways contemporary Arab and Afghan migration experiences are narrated in literary fiction and the asylum process. He currently teaches world literature and writing at Hope College in Michigan.

Wiam El-Tamami (Translator)

Wiam El-Tamami is an Egyptian writer, literary translator, and editor whose work has been featured in publications such as The Paris Review, Granta, Ploughshares, Freeman’s, AGNI, Literary Hub, ArabLit, and The Common, as well as various anthologies, including Palestine is Everywhere (Silver Press, 2025). She won the 2011 Harvill Secker Translation Prize and was a finalist for the 2023 Disquiet International Prize and the 2024 First Pages Prize. Her work also received a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2024 and was a runner-up for the 2025 Jules Chametzy Prize. She is an editor at large at The Avery Review and is currently based between Cairo and Berlin.

Cristina Viti (Translator)

Cristina Viti grew up in a trilingual family and started translating and studying languages at a very young age. Over the years she has supported and translated the work of several writers and poets, taken part in a number of international events & held workshops on collaborative translation in schools & university faculties. Her poetry and translations are published by a number of outlets, from international publishing houses to craft workshops producing limited editions of artists’ books.

Yasmin Zaher (Translator)

Yasmin Zaher is a Palestinian journalist and writer. Her debut novel, The Coin (Catapult / Footnotes)―a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice―was published in 2024, and awarded the Dylan Thomas Prize, 2025.