This book continues the personal story of Jabra Ibrahim Jabra (1920-1994) that began with The First Well: A Bethlehem Boyhood. Jabra was one of the Middle East's leading novelists, poets, critics, painters, and translators (he was the first to translate The Sound and the Fury into Arabic), and is the writer who is given credit for modernizing the Arabic novel. This book not only helps us understand Jabra as a writer and human being but also his times in post-World War II Baghdad when Iraq was enjoying an unprecedented period of creativity in literature and the arts. As a bright and...

This book is a poignant, intellectual autobiography of the Palestinian writer in pre-Saddam Baghdad.