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=> I``jaam

I``jaam

Posted by Jeffrey (Guest) - Sunday, February 11 2007, 16:12:09 (CET)
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From SINAN ANTOON:

Dear Friends,

My novel I``jaam is due to appear in English next month. Please urge your
friends to preorder and help me get the word out.

It's been hailed by al-Hayat as "One of the most important Iraqi and Arab
novels to be published recently . . An Iraqi novel par excellence."

al-Hayat (London) July, 16, 2005

More praise and details below.

Best,

Sinan

To order and read more, go to:

http://www.citylights.com/CLpub4th.html#457x

I¹jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody
By Sinan Antoon
Available June 2007
ISBN 0-87286-457-x
Paperback, 168 pp
$11.95
Pre-order Sale Price$8.37

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 Saddam¹s Iraq.

In the tradition of Kafka¹s The Trial, or Orwell¹s 1984, I¹jaam offers an
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 writes with an assurance of voice, a clear redefinition of
form and narrative, and compelling and beautiful language. Iraqi in origin,
but global in its scope, this book is deeply human." Chris Abani, author
of The Virgin of Flames and GraceLand

"Sinan Antoon's I'Jaam is a stunning work, as it brings to the present a
world of terror we know about, we have previously read about, but which
usually seems remote, unreal. It takes a great talent to make it so
specific, so Iraqi in this case, and so personal. This author shows the
particular sadistic humor that goes with cruelty, a "cultural" slant that
makes us identify it with the places where it happens. Evil becomes thus
both general, universal, and particular. The nightmare gains familiarity,
reality." Etel Adnan, author of Sitt Marie Rose and In the Heart of the
Heart of Another Country

³Sinan Antoon¹s novel traces, across time, space and faces, how the life of
a young generation under a barbaric regime becomes an existential minefield.
Life is no more what it is. Everything is a trace of itself. Even daily
language is cluttered with debris from the mines of hell. Incessantly
targeted in a nightmarish atmosphere, the individual can only save
him/herself with the stubbornness of an animal." Saadi Youssef, author of
Without an Alphabet, Without a Face: Selected Poems

"In this beautiful and brilliant novel, Sinan Antoon expresses the voice of
those whose voices were robbed by oppression, stressing the fact that
literature can at times be the only framework to protect human experiences
from falling into oblivion. I`jaam is an honest and exciting window onto
Iraq, written with both love and bitter sarcasm, hope and despair. It does
not only illuminate reality in Iraq prior to the American invasion, but also
the human experience in its insistence on resisting oppression and
injustice." Elias Khoury, author of Gate of the Sun

"Brief, bitter and bracing, IŒjaam displays all the dangerous prismatic
grace and light of shattered glass. Nuanced and direct, Antoon¹s razor-sharp
voice rises out of the prisons and mass graves of Iraq during the era when
Saddam Hussein enjoyed U.S. government support and no one heard these voices
silenced in their tens and hundreds of thousands. The hopeful tenderness of
this voice goes on speaking now, and we can be grateful that a new
translation allows us, finally, to hear it. In this time of endless war, it
tells (again) a story we needed so many lives ago." Sesshu Foster, author
of Atomik Aztex

Sinan Antoon (Baghdad, 1967) has published in leading international journals
and has co-directed, "About Baghdad," an acclaimed documentary about Iraq
under U.S. occupation. In June 2007, Harbor Mountain Press will be
publishing a book of poetry by Sinan, The Baghdad Blues.

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