Tali, Farid: Prosopopoeia

Prosopopoeia by Farid Tali. Translated from the French by Aditi Machado (Action Books, paperback)

Publication Date: December 20, 2016

Publisher Marketing: Poetry. Middle Eastern Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. "In lines so lush they verge on grotesque, the body and its beauty are rendered by Farid Tali. As 'render' means to depict but also separate flesh from its bone, so too does this elegiac novel dismantle the barriers of memory, romanticism, and predetermination to illuminate the ragged beauty of a body in transition out of itself and into what is void. Is death beautiful? If beauty rages, shocks, evanesces, then it must be. Aditi Machado makes a stark, dark French into tight, lean English, taut as a string that when plucked must sing. A brief novel that only seems to drift lightly like a musical air; in reality it will settle down heavy in your bones and haunt you a long, long time." —Kazim Ali

"Out of the decaying body, Farid Tali has wrought song. Every sentence surprises, adding up to an exquisite book unlike any other." —Maggie Nelson

"PROSOPOPOEIA reverberates with a sadness that is quiet, detached and stark...Here, Tali transforms the violent excess of his earlier ruminations into a more fully realized testament to the human body." —Abby Burns