Adonis is acclaimed worldwide as a poet, essayist, philosopher and theorist of Arab poetics. Referred to in interviews as “the best living poet in the Arab world” and “the great sage of poetry, secularism and freedom of expression in the Arab world,” Adonis has been writing poetry for 75 years and has over fifty works of poetry, criticism, essays and translations published in Arabic. His modernist influence on Arabic poetry has often been compared to that of T.S. Eliot in English-language poetry.

Ali Ahmad Said Esber was born in the town of Qassabin, Syria in 1930. He took on the pseudonym of Adonis when he was 17 years old, and by doing so he unwittingly symbolized what would become his world view, his “breaking free from everything which is religious and nationalistic, and a way of embracing everything human and universal.” He co-founded and edited the influential poetry journal Sh’ir and later founded and edited the equally important Mawaqif.

He has been given numerous awards, including the highest honor bestowed in France, the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (2012), Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters (1997), the Nazim Hikmet Award in Turkey (1994), Germany’s Goethe Award (the first Arab author to receive this distinction, in 2011), the Third International Golden Antelope Poetry Award (2013, Xining, China), the Erich Maria Remarque Freedom Award (Osnabrück, Germany, 2015), the PEN/Nabokov International Literature Lifetime Achievement Award in the United States (2017), and the 13th Poetry and People Award (Guangzhou, China 2018).

His latest works to be translated into Spanish include Violencia e islam (Violence and Islam, Ariel, 2016) and El libro II (Book II, Ediciones del oriente y del mediterráneo, 2018) and Zócalo (Vaso Roto ediciones, 2014).

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