Saadi Yousef (Arabic: سعدي يوسف‎) (born 1934 near Basra, Iraq) is an Iraqi author, poet, journalist, publisher, and political activist.[1] He has published thirty volumes of poetry and seven books of prose. He left Iraq in 1979 after the rise of Sadadam Hussein.


"This book collects some of the best of Saadi Youssef's most recent poems from the last decade, since the ongoing American-led war in his home country of Iraq. In direct, penetrating language, translated from the original Arabic by Sinan Antoon and Peter Money, Youssef's poems dwell on the casualties of the war, the loss of his country, the role of the writer in exile, the atrocities of Saddam Hussein, and the inhumane acts perpetrated by American military at Abu Ghraib. What emerges is the powerful voice of a writer for whom "Poetry transforms in that intimate moment which combines the current and the eternal in a wondrous embrace."--Amazon.com, viewed February 25, 2013.