To go without food from dawn to dusk for the month of Ramadan - how does this feel? When we deny our major appetites, what do we become? Kazim Ali brings a poet's precision and ardor to his brilliant meditations on ritual fasting.Jane Hirshfield, author of AFTER and NINE GATES, says: "Kazim Ali -- a writer whose powers astonish in everything he puts pen to -- has made in FASTING FOR RAMADAN a book that is hybrid, peregrine, and deeply, quietly revelatory. Ali's meditations on the month-long ritual fast unfold, across cultures and spiritual practices, the deep meaning of a chosen foregoing. These journal-born pages are both intimate and public, at once ecumenical, particular, daily, and eloquently learned, planted on the deep roots of tradition, they breathe this moment's air. Is it possible for a work to be at once modest and an undeniable tour de force? This book proves: it is.