The Rebel's Silhouette

"Though privileged by birth and education, Faiz was, by both his words and his actions, a champion of the world's voiceless and suffering peoples....He wrote eloquently of the human aspiration for freedom, dignity, and, of course, love.... Ali's may well be the touchstone for English translations of Faiz to date."—South Asia

"Agha Shahid Ali has done with these Faiz poems what we hope from any translation: he has brought the original closer to us, made it possible for us to have a sense of what it may be like to read the poetry of a great talent from a language and tradition very far from our own habits."—W.S. Merwin

"[Faiz] was read and listened to both by the literary elite and by the masses....He was, I think, one of the greatest poets of this century, and was honored as such throughout the major part of Asia and Africa."—Edward W. Said