**A Best Book of the Year So Far by The New YorkerIn this achingly beautiful novel of trauma, memory, and identity, two Iraqi men struggle to start a new life in the United States after the Gulf War.**Sami, a retired doctor, lives with his son and grandchildren in Brooklyn. As he tries to navigate this new city, it becomes increasingly clear he is losing his memory due to dementia. Every day he sinks deeper into old memories of a life in Iraq before the war.

Deux Irakiens se sont expatriés aux États-Unis après avoir vécu les horreurs de la dictature et des guerres qui ont ravagé leur pays. Sami, atteint d’une maladie neurodégénérative, a presque tout oublié et est obsédé par l’idée de rentrer “chez lui” : à Bagdad. Omar s’est exilé après avoir subi le terrible châtiment infligé aux déserteurs. Il désire, lui, se défaire de ses souvenirs douloureux, et se prétend portoricain dans l’espoir de mieux s’intégrer.À travers la trajectoire déch...

Jawad est le fils cadet d’une famille chiite de Bagdad. Son père le prépare à exercer la même profession rituelle que lui, celle de laver et de préparer les morts avant leur enterrement. Mais Jawad s’y refuse et rêve de devenir sculpteur “pour célébrer la vie plutôt que vivre avec les trépassés”.

Youssef, un vieil Irakien chrétien, refuse obstinément de quitter Bagdad, sa ville natale. À la suite d’un attentat, il accueille chez lui une proche parente, Maha, et son mari. Maha ne rêve que de partir, et le plus vite possible. L’un après l’autre, Youssef et Maha révèlent leur passé à travers lequel l’on découvre les itinéraires opposés de deux générations d’Irakiens. Celle des anciens, attachés à un passé nostalgique, et celle des plus jeunes qui s’accrochent à l’espoir de fuir les ho...

Young Jawad, born to a traditional Shi'ite family of corpse washers and shrouders in Baghdad, decides to abandon the family tradition, choosing instead to become a sculptor, to celebrate life rather than tend to death. He enters Baghdad’s Academy of Fine Arts in the late 1980s, in defiance of his father’s wishes and determined to forge his own path. But the circumstances of history dictate otherwise. Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and the economic sanctions of the 1990s destroy the socioeco...

In this achingly beautiful novel of trauma, memory, and identity, two Iraqi men struggle to start a new life in the United States after the Gulf War.Sami, a retired doctor, lives with his son and grandchildren in Brooklyn. As he tries to navigate this new city, it becomes increasingly clear he is losing his memory due to dementia. Every day he sinks deeper into old memories of a life in Iraq before the war.Omar arrived in the US with no family. He has run a...

Sinan Antoon returns to the Iraq war in a poetic and provocative tribute to reclaiming memoryWidely-celebrated author Sinan Antoon’s fourth and most sophisticated novel follows Nameer, a young Iraqi scholar earning his doctorate at Harvard, who is hired by filmmakers to help document the devastation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the excursion, Nameer ventures to al-Mutanabbi street in Baghdad, famed for its bookshops, and encounters Wadood, an eccentric book...

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTIONAn intimate and remarkably human novel of modern Iraq**Displaced by the sectarian violence in the city, Maha and her husband are taken in by a distant cousin, Youssef. As the growing turmoil around them seeps into their household, a rare argument breaks out between the elderly Youssef and his young guest. Born into sanctions and war, Maha knows nothing of Iraq's good years that Youssef holds dear.Set over a...

Ave Maria, do autor iraquiano Sinan Antoon, é um romance que mergulha na vida de uma família cristã caldeia em Bagdá, destacando o impacto das guerras e perseguições contra minorias no Iraque. A história se passa em um único dia e apresenta os pontos de vista contrastantes de Yussef, um idoso que se agarra à nostalgia do passado, e Maha, uma jovem profundamente marcada pela dor e pelo ressentimento. Os dois personagens revivem memórias pessoais e coletivas, revelando traumas familiares e a...

In der Direktion der Staatssicherheit wird ein Manuskript gefunden, das ein Gefangener in einer Art Geheimschrift verfasst hat. Ein Parteigenosse erhält den Auftrag, den verdächtigen Text lesbar zu machen. Sein Urheber ist Furât, Anglistikstudent und angehender Schriftsteller. Lange hatte er gezögert, bevor er die weißen Blätter zu füllen begann, die ihm ein Mitinsasse heimlich zugesteckt hatte. Ein gefährliches Unterfangen. Das Land befindet sich im Krieg, das totalitäre Regime duldet kei...

Fragmentos de Bagdad saca a la luz una imagen de la capital iraquí alejada de los tópicos creados en los últimos años: una ciudad abierta, diversa y culta, a la que solo las constantes guerras han sumido en un ciego radicalismo en el que aún existen resquicios de razón y esperanza. Yúsuf, quien ha vivido los mejores años de Bagdad y se muestra tan melancólico como optimista respecto al futuro, y su joven sobrina Maha, cuya vida ha estado salpicada por atentados, secuestros y violencia, se ...

Sinan Antoon returns to the Iraq war in a poetic and provocative tribute to reclaiming memoryWidely-celebrated author Sinan Antoon's fourth and most sophisticated novel follows Nameer, a young Iraqi scholar earning his doctorate at Harvard, who is hired by filmmakers to help document the devastation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the excursion, Nameer ventures to al-Mutanabbi street in Baghdad, famed for its bookshops, and encounters Wadood, an eccentric book...