Author : Samuel Shimon
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 13,51 MB
Release : 2012-03-15
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9992179031
A young Iraqi writer sets out to become a Hollywood film-maker, only to end up as a refugee on the streets of Paris, where he beds down in a metro station. Although his dream of making a film about his deaf mute father is never realised, the extraordinary encounters he has with the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Beckett and a ghost from Père Lachaise Cemetery transform his own story into a captivating drama more compelling than anything on the big screen.
Author : Frédéric Bozo
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 49,29 MB
Release : 2016-12-06
Category : History
ISBN : 0231801394
In March 2003, the United States and Great Britain invaded Iraq to put an end to the regime of Saddam Hussein. The war was launched without a United Nations mandate and was based on the erroneous claim that Iraq had retained weapons of mass destruction. France, under President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, spectacularly opposed the United States and British invasion, leading a global coalition against the war that also included Germany and Russia. The diplomatic crisis leading up to the war shook both French and American perceptions of each other and revealed cracks in the transatlantic relationship that had been building since the end of the Cold War. Based on exclusive French archival sources and numerous interviews with former officials in both France and the United States, A History of the Iraq Crisis retraces the international exchange that culminated in the 2003 Iraq conflict. It shows how and why the Iraq crisis led to a confrontation between two longtime allies unprecedented since the time of Charles de Gaulle, and it exposes the deep and ongoing divisions within Europe, the Atlantic alliance, and the international community as a whole. The Franco-American narrative offers a unique prism through which the American road to war can be better understood.
Author : Muhsin al-Ramli
Publisher : Akashic Books
Page : 209 pages
File Size : 43,1 MB
Release : 2018-08-07
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1617756547
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.
Author : Samuel Shimon
Publisher : Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 22,78 MB
Release : 2011-02-21
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9789992142295
A young Iraqi writer sets out to become a Hollywood filmmaker, only to end up as a refugee on the streets of Paris.
Author : Brigitte Findakly
Publisher : Drawn & Quarterly
Page : 114 pages
File Size : 10,96 MB
Release : 2021-04-22
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN : 1770463712
A personal account of an Iraqi childhood Poppies of Iraq is Brigitte Findakly’s nuanced tender chronicle of her relationship with her homeland Iraq, co-written and drawn by her husband, the acclaimed cartoonist Lewis Trondheim. In spare and elegant detail, they share memories of her middle class childhood touching on cultural practices, the education system, Saddam Hussein’s state control, and her family’s history as Orthodox Christians in the arab world. Poppies of Iraq is intimate and wide-ranging; the story of how one can become separated from one’s homeland and still feel intimately connected yet ultimately estranged. Signs of an oppressive regime permeate a seemingly normal life: magazines arrive edited by customs; the color red is banned after the execution of General Kassim; Baathist militiamen are publicly hanged and school kids are bussed past them to bear witness. As conditions in Mosul worsen over her childhood, Brigitte’s father is always hopeful that life in Iraq will return to being secular and prosperous. The family eventually feels compelled to move to Paris, however, where Brigitte finds herself not quite belonging to either culture. Trondheim brings to life Findakly’s memories to create a poignant family portrait that covers loss, tragedy, love, and the loneliness of exile. Poppies of Iraq has been translated from the French by Helge Dascher. Dascher has been translating graphic novels from French and German to English for over twenty years. A contributor to Drawn & Quarterly since the early days, her translations include acclaimed titles such as the Aya series by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie, Hostage by Guy Delisle, and Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët. With a background in art history and history, she also translates books and exhibitions for museums in North America and Europe. She lives in Montreal.
Author : Inaam Kachachi
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 177 pages
File Size : 41,73 MB
Release : 2021-11-30
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1623710812
"We let ourselves be won over by this novel that describes with such faithfulness and emotion the tearing apart of a country and a woman forever caught between two shores." ‚ÄîLe Monde "Full of poetry and freshness‚Ķ" ‚ÄîGuide de la rentree litteraire, Lire/Virgin WINNER OF FRANCE’S THE LAGARDERE PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE OF ARABIC FICTIONRAISES IMPORTANT QUESTIONS ABOUT IDENTITY, BELONGING, AND PATRIOTISM In her award-winning novel, Inaam Kachachi portrays the dual tragedy of her native land: America’s failure and the humiliation of Iraq. The American Granddaughter depicts the American occupation of Iraq through the eyes of a young Iraqi-American woman, who returns to her country as an interpreter for the US Army. Through the narrator’s conflicting emotions, we see the tragedy of a country which, having battled to emerge from dictatorship, then finds itself under foreign occupation. At the beginning of America’s occupation of Iraq, Zeina returns to her war-torn homeland as an interpreter for the US Army. Her formidable grandmother—the only family member that Zeina believes she has in Iraq—gravely disapproves of her granddaughter’s actions. Then Zeina meets Haider and Muhaymin, two “brothers” she knows nothing of, and falls deeply in love with Muhaymin, a militant in the Al Mehdi Army. These experiences force her to question all her values.
Author : Margaret MacMillan
Publisher : Random House
Page : 626 pages
File Size : 43,26 MB
Release : 2007-12-18
Category : History
ISBN : 0307432963
A landmark work of narrative history, Paris 1919 is the first full-scale treatment of the Peace Conference in more than twenty-five years. It offers a scintillating view of those dramatic and fateful days when much of the modern world was sketched out, when countries were created—Iraq, Yugoslavia, Israel—whose troubles haunt us still. Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize • Winner of the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize • Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize Between January and July 1919, after “the war to end all wars,” men and women from around the world converged on Paris to shape the peace. Center stage, for the first time in history, was an American president, Woodrow Wilson, who with his Fourteen Points seemed to promise to so many people the fulfillment of their dreams. Stern, intransigent, impatient when it came to security concerns and wildly idealistic in his dream of a League of Nations that would resolve all future conflict peacefully, Wilson is only one of the larger-than-life characters who fill the pages of this extraordinary book. David Lloyd George, the gregarious and wily British prime minister, brought Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes. Lawrence of Arabia joined the Arab delegation. Ho Chi Minh, a kitchen assistant at the Ritz, submitted a petition for an independent Vietnam. For six months, Paris was effectively the center of the world as the peacemakers carved up bankrupt empires and created new countries. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals, and prejudices of the men who shaped the settlement. They pushed Russia to the sidelines, alienated China, and dismissed the Arabs. They struggled with the problems of Kosovo, of the Kurds, and of a homeland for the Jews. The peacemakers, so it has been said, failed dismally; above all they failed to prevent another war. Margaret MacMillan argues that they have unfairly been made the scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later. She refutes received ideas about the path from Versailles to World War II and debunks the widely accepted notion that reparations imposed on the Germans were in large part responsible for the Second World War. Praise for Paris 1919 “It’s easy to get into a war, but ending it is a more arduous matter. It was never more so than in 1919, at the Paris Conference. . . . This is an enthralling book: detailed, fair, unfailingly lively. Professor MacMillan has that essential quality of the historian, a narrative gift.” —Allan Massie, The Daily Telegraph (London)
Author : Pierre Razoux
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 679 pages
File Size : 16,17 MB
Release : 2015-11-03
Category : History
ISBN : 0674088638
From 1980 to 1988, Iran and Iraq fought the longest conventional war of the twentieth century. The tragedies included the slaughter of child soldiers, the use of chemical weapons, the striking of civilian shipping in the Gulf, and the destruction of cities. The Iran-Iraq War offers an unflinching look at a conflict seared into the region’s collective memory but little understood in the West. Pierre Razoux shows why this war remains central to understanding Middle Eastern geopolitics, from the deep-rooted distrust between Sunni and Shia Muslims, to Iran’s obsession with nuclear power, to the continuing struggles in Iraq. He provides invaluable keys to decipher Iran’s behavior and internal struggle today. Razoux’s account is based on unpublished military archives, oral histories, and interviews, as well as audio recordings seized by the U.S. Army detailing Saddam Hussein’s debates with his generals. Tracing the war’s shifting strategies and political dynamics—military operations, the jockeying of opposition forces within each regime, the impact on oil production so essential to both countries—Razoux also looks at the international picture. From the United States and Soviet Union to Israel, Europe, China, and the Arab powers, many nations meddled in this conflict, supporting one side or the other and sometimes switching allegiances. The Iran-Iraq War answers questions that have puzzled historians. Why did Saddam embark on this expensive, ultimately fruitless conflict? Why did the war last eight years when it could have ended in months? Who, if anyone, was the true winner when so much was lost?
Author : Wendell Steavenson
Publisher : National Geographic Books
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 13,60 MB
Release : 2019-03-12
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0393356795
“A nuanced, engrossing novel about conviction and terrorism in a cosmopolitan, complicated world.”—National Book Review From the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, Paris Metro is a story of East meets West. Kit, a reporter, has spent several years after 9/11 living in the Middle East, working as a correspondent for an American newspaper. Along the way she falls in love and marries a charismatic Iraqi diplomat named Ahmed, before their separation leaves Kit raising their teenage son alone in Paris. But after the Charlie Hebdo attack occurs and, a few months later, terrorists storm the Bataclan, Kit’s core beliefs are shattered. The violence she had spent years covering abroad is now on her doorstep. As Kit struggles with her grief and confusion, she begins to mistrust those closest to her: her friends, her husband, even her own son.
Author : Peter W. Galbraith
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 323 pages
File Size : 25,74 MB
Release : 2008-09-04
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1847396127
The invasion of Iraq by American, British and other coalition forces has indeed transformed the Middle East, but not as the Bush and Blair administrations had imagined. It is Iran, not Western-style democracy, that has emerged as the big winner, creating a Tehran-Baghdad axis that would have been unthinkable before the war. THE END OF IRAQ is the definitive account of the US and UK's catastrophic involvement in Iraq, as told by America's leading independent expert on the country. Peter Galbraith reveals in exquisite detail how US policies -- some going back to the Reagan administration -- have now produced a nearly independent Kurdistan in the north, an Islamic state in the south, and uncontrollable insurgency in the centre, and an incipient Sunni-Shiite civil war that has Baghdad as its central front. Iraq, Galbraith argues, cannot be reconstructed as a single state. Instead, a sensible strategy must accept that it has already broken up and focus instead on stopping an escalating civil war. Unflinching, accessible and powerful, THE END OF IRAQ explores and explains the myriad mistakes and false assumptions that have brought the country to its current pass, and what must be done to prevent further bloodshed.
