Seen through the eyes of a nine-year old girl, Huda, this novel beautifully captures the atmosphere of Baghdad in the 1940s. A city of public steam baths, of roadside butchers, of spinning tops, and childhood games played in the streets, streets where political demonstrations are beginning to take place. With real perception, the complex web of family relationships is illustrated by the tension between the fiery and feisty nature of Huda and her powerlessness as a child. Huda’s father, a prison guard and a bully, hides his weakness beneath apparent strength. He drives his desperately ill wife from the family home, replacing her with his pregnant second wife. But Huda has two allies: her devoted and beloved brother Adil and her grandmother, who is the real power in the family. With strikingly inventive use of language, Alia Mamdouh plays out relationships of apparent strength and actual love in a novel that charms and beguiles, even while it kicks and fights its way to its shocking conclusion. “This novel is a song to the ordinary folk of Baghdad, to the places reserved in memory, for the childhood and adolescence of an Iraqi woman . . . a song which evokes sadness and happiness at once.”—Latifa al-Zayyat, Nour Quarterly

Alia Mamdouh was born in Baghdad in 1944. She graduated in 1971 from al-Mustansiriya University and has been chief editor of al-Rasid magazine and al-Fikr al-mu‘asir. Her first novel was published in 1973 and was followed by a collection of short stories. Her most recent novel The Loved Ones was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2004. Peter Theroux has translated a number of Arabic novels including Children of the Alley by Naguib Mahfouz (AUC Press 2001).