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This collection from Nineb Lamassu should be on the top of your 2016 reading list. Lamassu has established himself as a leading poet and an avant-garde of modernist Assyrian poetry. In ths collection Lamassu experiments with the Modern Assyrian language and its poetic forms while breaking free from Modern Assyrian poetic conventions; much like a butterfly breaking free from its earlier cocooned self.
The collection is themed around the persecution of the Assyrian people and other persecuted people of the Middle East during the last one hundred years, with a special focus on the years 1915 to 2015.
In 2014, ISIS attacked a number of major Iraqi cities and captured the ancient Assyrian capital of Nineveh (modern day Mosul) and the largely Assyrian populated Nineveh Plains region. Shortly after, in 2015, ISIS also attacked Assyrian villages along the Khabour river in Syria, occupying these villages and capturing nearly three hundred Assyrian hostages, most of them women, children and the elderly. 2015 Also marked the centennial of the Assyrian genocide of 1915. Thus, this collection focuses on the plight of the Assyrian people and other oppressed peoples in the Middle East during the last one hundred years.
