Taha Muhammad Ali

Adina Hoffman’s Jewish Quarterly-Wingate-Prize-winning biography of Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali is a moving account of the ways “ordinary” individuals are swept up by the floodtides of both war and peace.

Hoffman's beautifully written book, My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness, tells the story of an exceptional man and the culture from which he emerged. It also reflects on the often alchemical means by which experience is transformed into art.

“A remarkable book,” according to Boyd Tonkin in the Independent.  “A triumph of personal empathy and historical insight, and a beacon for anyone who knows that ‘more joins than separates us.’” 

Adina Hoffman is the author of House of Windows: Portraits from a Jerusalem Neighborhood and My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century, which was awarded the 2010 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize. She is also the recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship.

In association with Banipal.