A Boat to Lesbos Linda Lee Welch and to the “Voltaire of

and to the “Voltaire of the Nile” (as the French press called him) Egyptian author Albert Cossery

Extracts from Sherko Berkes’s The Valley of Butterfly

controlled gambling dens

When Booker finally snatches the girls

Across continents and time-zones

A Boat to Lesbos Linda Lee Welch and to the “Voltaire ofShortlisted for the inaugural Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation A Boat to Lesbos is a powerful and compelling epic poem, written while thousands of Syrian refugees were enduring frightening journeys across the Mediterranean before arriving on the small island. Set out like a Greek tragedy, it is passionate and dramatic witness to the horrors and ravages suffered by Syrian families forced to flee their destroyed country, seen through the