What others said about Arabic From the author's own Arabic

In his preface to the Arabic edition of The Zephyrs of Najd:

“And yet how I wished I had written this book – the book on the zephyrs of Najd – in Arabic. But the narrow circumstances of academic life had from the start imposed their own language on me – that is, the language of their institution in its local setting. Or perhaps it never happened quite as I now picture it, or as I secretly try to interpret and justify myself; for in all likelihood I considered – and still consider – the project of writing a book as ambitious as this one in the language that had to be the very medium of its subject – let alone a part of that language itself – a task beyond my power.”

The text is as printed in the author’s preface to the Arabic edition, signed “Bloomington, Indiana, 20 January 2003”; the book does not say whether he wrote it in Arabic or it was translated. The book first appeared in English as The Zephyrs of Najd (Chicago 1993). Read in a printed copy; no link, as the edition is in copyright. The English is ours. The zephyr of Najd, the east wind blowing from Najd, gives the book its title and subject: nostalgia in the opening of the classical Arabic ode.

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