I'jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody
By (Author) Sinan Antoon
City Lights Books
City Lights Books
1st July 2007
United States
General
Fiction
892.717
Paperback
168
Width 127mm, Height 185mm, Spine 10mm
141g
An inventory of the General Security headquarters in central Baghdad reveals an obscure manuscript. Written by a young man in detention, the prose moves from prison life, to adolescent memories, to frightening hallucinations, and what emerges is a portrait of life in Saddam Husseins Iraq.
In the tradition of Kafkas The Trial or Orwells 1984, Ijaam offers insight into life under an oppressive political regime and how that oppression works. This is a stunning debut by a major young Iraqi writer-in-exile.
Sinan Antoon has been published in leading international journals and has co-directed About Baghdad, an acclaimed documentary about Iraq under US occupation.
Sinan Antoon was born in Baghdad, Iraq. After the 1991 Gulf War, he left Iraq and settled in the US where he studied Arabic Literature at Georgetown and Harvard. His poems and essays (Arabic and English) have been published in leading journals and newspapers in the Arab world, as well as The Nation, al-Ahram Weekly and Middle East Report.