Iraqi Poets In Western Exile - Salih J. Altoma

Salih J Altoma was born in Iraq. He is Professor Emeritus of Arabic and Comparative Literature at Indiana University, USA, and has been associated with the university since 1964.

He was its director of Middle Eastern Studies (1986-1991) and chair of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures department (1985-1991). He has published works in Arabic and English on modern Arabic literature, on Arab and Western literary relations, and was guest editor of The Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, Volume 48, 2000, whose theme was Arab-Western Literary Relations.

In 2006, Saqi Books published his valuable reference work Modern Arabic Literature in Translation: A companion, which covers all translations from Arabic to English from 1947 to 2003.

www.banipal.co.uk

A B S E N T ~ Betool Khedairi

Absent

Author :

Betool Khedairi

Absent tells the story of Dalal, a young Iraqi woman living with the childless aunt and uncle who raised her. Dalal and her neighbors try to maintain normal lives, despite the crippling effect of bombings and international sanctions resulting from the first Gulf War.

By turns affectionate, wry, and darkly comic, Absent paints a moving portrait of people struggling to get by in impossible circumstances. Upstairs, the fortune-teller Umm Mazin offers her customers cures for their physical and romantic ailments; below, Saad the hairdresser attends to a dwindling number of female customers; and on the second floor, the nurse Ilham dreams of her long-lost French mother to escape the grim realities she sees in the children’s ward at the hospital.

Hoping to bring in much-needed cash by selling honey, Dalal’s uncle turns to beekeeping, and instructs his niece in the care and feeding of these temperamental creatures. With memories of happier times during the “Days of Plenty” of her childhood, Dalal falls in love for the first time against a background of surprise arrests, personal betrayals, and a crumbling social fabric that turns neighbors into informants.

Tightly crafted and skillfully told, Absent is a haunting portrait of life under sanctions, the fragile emotional ties between individuals, and, ultimately, the resilience of the human spirit.

Betool Khedairi was born in Baghdad in 1965 to an Iraqi father and a Scottish mother. She received a B.A. in French literature from the University of Mustansiriya and then traveled between Iraq, Jordan and the United Kingdom. She worked in the food industry while writing her first novel, A Sky So Close, published in Arabic in 1999 and now translated into English, Italian, French and Dutch. She currently lives in Amman, Jordan.

readkutub.wordpress.com

randomhouse.com

mediabistro.com

aucpress.com

betoolkhedairi.com

The Woman of the Flask ~ Salim Matar

A prize-winning Iraqi novel of the real and the surreal

The Woman of the Flask

Salim Matar

Description:

The Woman of the Flask is a most original novel - a blend of grim realism and fantasy. Two Iraqi exiles reach Switzerland, having escaped from Saddam's Iraq. One of them, Adam, has brought with him an old flask found among the possessions of his late father who came from the Marshlands of southern Iraq. He polishes it and opens it: a fabulously beautiful nubile young woman appears. She has, it emerges, been the lover of his ancestors going back five thousand years.

The novel weaves together the threads of her memories of Adam's ancestors, his day-today life and his work as a computer programmer, his fellow-exile, his Swiss wife, and his coping with the woman of the flask. She is not happy with immortality, and Adam and his friend confront both a European bureaucracy and an alternative world of magic and fantasy. The reader is swept along by a dizzyingly compelling narrative, unsure where the story is going but fascinated by the journey. The novel reflects the complexities of the world of today's Iraqis - an unprecedented history, a grimmer recent past, but with prospects that challenge imagination.

About The Author:

Salim Matar was born in Iraq and has lived in Geneva for over twenty years. He has been a computer specialist, a journalist, and a novelist. The Woman of the Flask won the al-Naqid Award in 1990.

salim-matar.com

books.google.com

internationalpubmarket.com

Showcase

www.iraqiartinexile.com

Cut and Shot

Shakir Hasan Al-Said cuts, slashes and pierces his paintings.

"Iraqi Artists in Exile"

Showcase Their Haunting Works

By Beth Secor

Thursday, Jan 15 2009

www.houstonpress.com