| Naphtalene: A Novel of Baghdad Contributor(s): Mamdouh, Alia (Author), Theroux, Peter (Translator), Cixous, Hélène (Foreword by) |
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ISBN: 1558614931 ISBN-13: 9781558614932 Publisher: Feminist Press OUR PRICE: $14.36 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: April 2006 Annotation: "This first novel by an Iraqi woman to be published in English in the United States is a hallucinatory incantationan ode to a city(with) its private courtyards and public baths where the women in Huda's life rage and pray and love and scream."-"Ms. Magazine" Now in paperback, "Naphtalene" captures a fierce and defiant young girl as she struggles to form her identity in 1950s Baghdad amid a world of unfulfilled women and family tragedies. Iraqi exile Alia Mamdouh is a journalist, essayist, and novelist living in Paris who received the Naguib Mahfouz Prize for Literature in 2004. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 2005000682 |
| Series: Women Writing the Middle East |
| Physical Information: 0.63" H x 5.9" W x 8.46" (0.63 lbs) 214 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 1940's - Chronological Period - 1950's - Cultural Region - Middle East - Sex & Gender - Feminine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Seen through the eyes of a strong-willed and perceptive young girl, Naphtalene beautifully captures the atmosphere of Baghdad in the 1940s and 1950s. Through her rich and lyrical descriptions, Alia Mamdouh vividly recreates a city of public steam baths, roadside butchers, and childhood games played in the same streets where political demonstrations against British colonialism are beginning to take place. At the heart of the novel is nine-year-old Huda, a girl whose fiery, defiant nature contrasts sharply with her own inherent powerlessness. Through Mamdouh's strikingly inventive use of language, Huda's stream-of-consciousness narrative expands to take in the life not only of a young girl and her family, but of her street, her neighborhood, and her country. Alia Mamdouh, winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Award in Arabic Literature, is a journalist, essayist and novelist living in exile in Paris. Long banned from publishing in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, she is the author of essays, short stories, and four novels, of which Naphtalene is the most widely acclaimed and translated. |