Thank You for the Window Office

Author: Maged Zaher 

Publisher: Ugly Duckling Presse (2012)

Thank You for the Window Office is the second book by Egyptian-American poet and translator Maged Zaher. This is a book as much about alienation as it is about belonging. Zaher investigates the subtleties of place and identity in late-capitalism, the corporate world, and the dating scene. These poems navigate the linguistic landscapes that an immigrant writing in his non-native tongue negotiates daily in a foreign culture. This unusual confluence creates a wry exploration of the social and lingual that blends the musicality of the Arabic language with a sardonic humor unique to America popular culture.

"Maged Zaher is in my view the contemporary writer simultaneously the furthest inside and the most outside the English language as we know it. If Frank O’Hara has been an Arab and a Coptic Christian living in late capitalist Seattle, he would have been called Maged Zaher."

–Leonard Schwartz