Sinan Antoon

يا مريم

فهرس

ليل واحد في كل المدن

Sinan Antoon returns to the Iraq war in a poetic and provocative tribute to reclaiming memory Widely-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 bookseller who is trying to catalogue everything destroyed by war, from objects, buildings, books and manuscripts, flora and fauna, to humans. Entrusted with the catalogue and obsessed with Wadood's project, Nameer finds life in New York movingly intertwined with fragments from his homeland's past and its present--destroyed letters, verses, epigraphs, and anecdotes--in this stylistically ambitious panorama of the wreckage of war and the power of memory.

The Book of Collateral Damage

Born into a family of corpse washers, Jawad abandons tradition by enrolling in Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts to study sculpting, but the conditions caused by Saddam Hussein's oppressive rule force a return home to the family business.

The Corpse Washer

Sinan Antun

A risky and risqué prison memoir depicts the collective nightmare of life under Saddam.

An Iraqi Rhapsody

I'jaam

إعجام

Youssef and Maha are distant relatives who find themselves living together in their native Baghdad, seeking shelter and solace from the increasing turmoil that surrounds them. While Youssef is old and has lived through many good years, Maha is young and has seen only sanctions and war. Herlife has been shattered by the sectarian violence engulfing Iraq, a country she feels no longer belongs to her.As the chaos in the country inevitably seeps into their household, a rare argument between Maha and Youssef breaks out, as this fateful day takes an unexpected and calamitous turn.Set over 24 hours, The Baghdad Eucharist unravels through the lives of one Christian family; it speaks both to Iraq's peaceful past, as well as its tragic and painful present.

A Novel

The Baghdad Eucharist

Ibn Al-Ḥajjāj and Sukhf

The Poetics of the Obscene

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 keinerlei Abweichung. In faszinierendem Wechsel zwischen Erinnerung und Gegenwart, Reflexion, Angst- und Wunschträumen schildert Furât das Leben der Studenten mit seinen abstrusen Verordnungen und Verboten, den aufgezwungenen Massenveranstaltungen, aber auch die glücklichen Momente mit seiner Geliebten Arîdsch und seiner Großmutter – zwei nicht konformen Frauen, die ganz entscheidend zu seinem Durchhalten beitragen. Schreiben als Widerstand: Mit der "Irakischen Rhapsodie" ist Sinan Antoon ein eindrucksvolles, poetisches Debüt gelungen.

Roman

Irakische Rhapsodie

Layl Wahid Fi Kull Al-mudun

A chilling poetic reflection on the world we have inherited and the destructions that made it. To confront time, pre-modern Arabic poems often began with the poet standing before the ruins, real and imagined, of a beloved's home. In Postcards from the Underworld, Sinan Antoon works in that tradition, observing the detritus of his home city, Baghdad, where he survived two wars--the Iran-Iraq War of 1980 and the First Gulf War of 1991--and which, after he left, he watched from afar being attacked during the US invasion in 2003. Antoon's poems confront violence and force us not to look away as he traces death's haunting presence in the world. Nature offers consolation, and flowers and butterflies are the poet's interlocutors, but they too cannot escape ruin. Composed in Arabic and translated into English by the poet himself, Postcards from the Underworld is a searing meditation on the destruction of humans, habitats, and homes.

Poems

Postcards from the Underworld

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 enfrentan en una discusión irresoluble sobre el futuro de su país. Su ruptura no es más que el símbolo de la ruptura de todo un pueblo. Sinan Antoon acomete con la mayor delicadeza y con gran emotividad el relato de la descomposición de una cultura en manos de la demencia política, de la pérdida y disolución del pasado en favor de la radicalidad del presente.

Fragmentos de Bagdad

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”.

Seul le grenadier

Jawad est le fils cadet d'une famille chiite de Bagdad. Son père le prépare à exercer la même profession rituelle que lui - celle qui consiste à laver et préparer les morts avant leur enterrement -, mais Jawad s'y refuse et rêve de devenir sculpteur. Après des études d'arts plastiques à la fin des années 1980, au moment où Saddam Hussein est au faîte de sa puissance, il se retrouve peintre en bâtiment. A la mort de son père en 2003, alors que les bombes américaines s'abattent sur Bagdad et que les corps déchiquetés s'entassent, multipliés par les guerres confessionnelles, Jawad est de nouveau forcé, dans une douloureuse solitude, de renoncer à ses rêves d'artiste pour poursuivre la carrière de son père. Dans ce magnifique roman récompensé du prix de la littérature arabe en 2017, Sinan Antoon ne se contente pas de restituer l'extrême violence que connaît l'Irak depuis sa longue guerre avec l'Iran. Il explore en fait, et de façon magistrale, le thème de l'imbrication de la vie et de la mort en une entité unique.

Jonathan Wright

Book of Collateral Damage

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 single day, The Baghdad Eucharist is an intimate story of love, memory, and anguish in one Christian family.

Poetry. THE BAGHDAD BLUES presents documentary filmmaker/co-creator of About Baghdad, Sinan Antoon's first poems in English. Antoon studied in Baghdad and moved to the States after the Gulf War. Since then, Sinan Antoon completed his dissertation at Harvard, has taught Arabic and literature at Dartmouth and NYU, and has a novella just published by City Lights. Antoon's poems--many of them published in Banipal (London) and Across Borders, as well as anthologized--are not quite the thin trails they would appear to be. Antoon's line, although lyrical, is packed with the absence and fury which ought to make us shake a fist at the skies. If it were only the sky's fault.

The Baghdad Blues

Sinān Anṭūn

De vocalisering. - Een Irakese gevangene, die gedetineerd is door de geheime dienst van Saddam Hoessein, vormt zich om tot een geheel andere persoonlijkheid.

riwāyaẗ

Iʻǧām

Muhsin al-Ramli

Nassif Falak

This unique anthology of Iraqi noir fiction collects fourteen original stories of crime, conspiracy, regret, and revenge in the capital of Iraq. The centuries-old city of Baghdad has known many rulers, many troubles, and many crimes. But while most Iraqis would agree that their life has always been noir, there has not been a literary tradition to capture this aspect of the culture. By commissioning the fourteen stories collected here—most by Iraqi writers, all by authors familiar with Baghdad—editor Samuel Shimon and Akashic Books have created what may be the first anthology of Iraqi crime fiction ever assembled. Here you will read of life in Baghdad both during and after the Saddam Hussein era, with stories of fear in the shadow of a ruthless dictator; kidnappings in the time of U.S. occupation; detectives who investigate political conspiracies; and tales of revenge, assassination, mental illness, and family struggle in the war-torn City of Peace. Baghdad Noir includes brand-new stories by Sinan Antoon, Ali Bader, Mohammed Alwan Jabr, Nassif Falak, Dheya al-Khalidi, Hussain al-Mozany, Layla Qasrany, Hayet Raies, Muhsin al-Ramli, Ahmed Saadawi, Hadia Said, Salima Salih, Salar Abdoh, and Roy Scranton.

Sinan Antoon

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