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Yale University Press
August 2013
On Sale: July 30, 2013
200 pages
ISBN: 0300190603
EAN: 9780300190601
Kindle: B00DV6OHSG
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
Young Jawad, born to a traditional Shi'ite family of corpse
washers and shrouders in Baghdad, decides to abandon the
family tradition, choosing instead to become a sculptor, to
celebrate life rather than tend to death. He enters
Baghdad’s Academy of Fine Arts in the late 1980s, in
defiance of his father’s wishes and determined to forge his
own path. But the circumstances of history dictate
otherwise. Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and the economic
sanctions of the 1990s destroy the socioeconomic fabric of
society. The 2003 invasion and military occupation unleash
sectarian violence. Corpses pile up, and Jawad returns to
the inevitable washing and shrouding. Trained as an artist
to shape materials to represent life aesthetically, he now
must contemplate how death shapes daily life and the bodies
of Baghdad’s inhabitants. Through the struggles of a single desperate family, Sinan
Antoon’s novel shows us the heart of Iraq’s complex and
violent recent history. Descending into the underworld where
the borders between life and death are blurred and where
there is no refuge from unending nightmares, Antoon limns a
world of great sorrows, a world where the winds wail.
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