Exiled, displaced, tortured, and grieving--each of the five Iraqi women whose lives and losses come to us through Haifa Zangana's skillfully wrought novel is searching in her own way for peace with a past that continually threatens to swallow up the present.
Majda, the widow of a former Ba'ath party official who was killed by the government he served. Adiba, a political dissident tortured under Saddam Hussein's regime. Um Mohammed, a Kurdish refugee who fled her home for political asylum. Iqbal, a divorced mother whose family in Iraq is suffering the effects of Western economic...
Exiled, displaced, tortured, and grieving--each of the five Iraqi women whose lives and losses come to us through Haifa Zangana's skillfully wrough...
"Deftly sketched, simple and poetic, Dreaming of Baghdad drags politics down from the realm of the abstract into the mud, fear, and loneliness of personal experience and psychological ruin that is life under dictatorship. This is a landscape of clandestine struggle and crushing political defeat, of familiar old streets and the alienating structures of exile. Zangana's story is heartbreaking, but her clarity and resilience inspire awe."--Christian Parenti In 1970s Iraq, the Ba'ath Party was at the height of its influence in the Middle East and popularity throughout the West....
"Deftly sketched, simple and poetic, Dreaming of Baghdad drags politics down from the realm of the abstract into the mud, fear, and loneliness ...
