Overview

‘Powerful, capacious and profound’ OCEAN VUONG ‘A book you won’t soon forget’ ILYA KAMINSKY ‘Astonishing’ TERRANCE HAYES LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE FROM THE WINNER OF THE 2025 PULITZER PRIZE FOR COMMENTARY A deeply powerful collection of poems about life in Gaza by acclaimed Palestinian poet, Mosab Abu Toha. Barely 30 years old, Mosab Abu Toha was already a well-known poet when the current assault on Gaza began. After the Israeli army bombed his house, pulverising a library he had painstakingly built for community use, he and his family fled for their safety. Not for the first time in their lives. Somehow, amid the chaos, Abu Toha kept writing poems. These are those poems. Uncannily clear, direct and beautifully tuned, they form one of the most astonishing works of art wrested from wartime. Here are directives for what to do in an air raid and lyrics about the poet’s wife, singing to his children to distract them. Huddled in the dark, Abu Toha remembers his grandfather’s oranges and his daughter’s joy in eating them. Here are poems to introduce readers to his extended family, some of them no longer with us. Moving between glimpses of life in relative peacetime and absurdist poems about surviving in a barely liveable occupation, Forest of Noise invites a wide audience into an experience that defies the imagination — even as it is watched live. This is an extraordinary and arrestingly whimsical book, that brings us indelible art in a time of terrible suffering. ‘A glimpse into life in a besieged Gaza and what it’s like to survive and find care, even hope, under the most dire of conditions’ NEW YORK TIMES ‘If literature has any power to change the world or resist injustice, I think it must lie in the astounding poems of Mosab Abu Toha’ NOREEN MASUD ‘The poems in Mosab Abu Toha's Forest of Noise are urgent, prayerful howls in the bleakest of nights’ ADA LIMÓN ‘Essential … uses language to fight against those who would ignore his people’s plight’ JHALAK REVIEW

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9780008738860

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Reviews

‘A powerful, capacious and profound book, rich in intelligence and lyric dexterity that fuses poetry's two great promises, wonder and testament, into crystalline focus’ Ocean Vuong, author of Time Is a Mother ‘A glimpse into life in a besieged Gaza and what it’s like to survive and find care, even hope, under the most dire of conditions’ New York Times ‘If literature has any power to change the world or resist injustice, I think it must lie in the astounding poems of Mosab Abu Toha’ Noreen Masud, author of A Flat Place, in Guardian ‘The poems in Mosab Abu Toha's Forest of Noise are urgent, prayerful howls in the bleakest of nights … each poetic line is, at its heart, a lifeline to survival’ Ada Limón, US Poet Laureate, author of The Hurting Kind ‘Abu Toha writes with a brilliance that makes anyone who encounters these astonishing poems both witness and kin’ Terrance Hayes, author of So to Speak ‘Heartbreaking, evocative, transformative poetry of witness to the horror of warfare … This is powerful, impactful poetry, a book you won’t soon forget. Forgetting is not an option’ llya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic ‘Astonishing … Mosab Abu Toha is the essential poet embodying the humanity of Gaza, the precious hopes and dreams of all humans, the searing collective cries of children, the indelible honest conscience, the heart and soul’ Naomi Shihab Nye, author of The Tiny Journalist ‘Essential … uses language to fight against those who would ignore his people’s plight’ Jhalak Review ‘Toha forces us to recognise the obliteration of potential wrought by genocide and apartheid … This is a deeply clever book’ Susannah Dickey, author of Isdal ‘Mosab Abu Toha’s poems etch themselves in your heart like shrapnel transformed to flowers. They dress the wounds of the human soul’ Pascale Petit, author of The Huntress ‘Full of fury and longing, an emblem of the richness of Palestinian culture’ Lindsey Hilsum, The List ‘Deeply powerful … an urgent and essential must-read’ Service95

Author Information

MOSAB ABU TOHA is a Palestinian poet, short story writer and essayist from Gaza. His first collection of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and won the Palestine Book Award, the American Book Award and the Walcott Poetry Prize. Abu Toha is also the founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza, which Israel destroyed. His second poetry book, Forest of Noise, was named a NYT Notable Book of the Year and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. In 2025, Abu Toha won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his Letter from Gaza columns in The New Yorker.

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