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English edition
Oct
2005
198 pp.
Paperback
12.5X20 cm
$18.95
LE 80.00
ISBN
978 977 424 923 5
For sale only in the Middle East
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Naphtalene
A Novel of Baghdad
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Alia Mamdouh
Translated by
Peter Theroux
A novel of Baghdad from the prize-winning Iraqi author
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).
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Reviews
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“Describes in poetic, incantatory language the city's domestic life...(and) around this private world swirl the politics of the 1950's in Iraq.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Mamdouh...employs shifts of narrative perspective and a sophisticated technique in this affectionate but critical dissection of her culture...(Naphtalene is) A pungent, episodic glimpse of childhood in a patriarchal society...often intense and lyrical.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Mamdouh's prose is at once lush and refreshingly earthy...she anchors her tale with a spirited and highly sympathetic narrator coming of age in a Baghdad long gone.”—Publishers Weekly
“[Naphtalene] is a hallucinatory incantation, a fevered dream and nightmare and, finally, a lyric evocation of a place disappeared.”—Susan Straight, Ms. Magazine
“Couldn't be more timely...subjects one Baghdad neighborhood to the scrutiny of a child who observes its deepest divisions and secrets, providing a profoundly human portrayal of the city that makes it more real, in many ways, than a view through a plasma TV ever could.”—In These Times
“Ferocious, visceral descriptions...give a powerful sense not only of Huda's world but also of the way we make and understand memories."”—Booklist
“The story of Huda, a young girl growing up in Baghdad during the 1940s and 1950s...leaves an indelible impression. Her world is rich with family and neighbors and she notes all of their subtle interactions and secrets.”—Library Journal
“Beautifully evokes the sounds and scents of old Baghdad, as in her descriptions of Friday night prayers: stained tiles and worshippers with sweat-glistened faces, bare feet and non-stop supplications, incense and perfumes.”—The Washington Post Book World
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Also available
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The Loved Ones
Hardbound
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The Loved Ones
Paperback
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