"Ouafa and Thawra is a nomadic collection: well-travelled and restless, but with roots firmly in revolutionary Tunisia, a tumultuous country �where people are sweet/ where even the hypocrisy is sweet.� Arturo Desimone travels fearlessly between genres, too, with sketches deepening the reading experience and a postscript essay on Tunisia before and after the �Arab Spring� adding context to the poems (and offering the controversial but sound claim that the Arab Spring was catalysed by the events of 2003 in Iraq). Desimone is wholly original: his poems simultaneously draw on a breathtaking, freewheeling sense of linguistic innovation, and on a timeless well of imagery and mythology." - Jacob Silkstone, managing editor of Asymptote journal, co-founder of The Missing Slate