Late for Tea at the Deer Palace Four Generations of My Family in Iraq

Just ten days after Baghdad s fall in 2003, Tamara Chalabi arrived in the city after a lifetime in exile finally entering the homeland she d known only through stories and her own imagination. Investigating four generations of her family s history at the forefront of Iraqi society, Chalabi offers a rich portrait of Middle Eastern life and a provocative look at a lost Iraq. Unforgettable characters provide glimpses of the end of the Ottoman Empire, the birth of the Iraqi state, the flowering of the Paris of the Middle East, and Iraq s descent into chaos. At once intimate and magisterial, Chalabi s memoir of return and reclamation vividly captures the rich history of a country shattered by war and a family that has never forgotten its past. "