Time to Pick Up October's Book from Iraq!

The vote was close, but we have a winner. Before we get to that we’d like to share our favorite comment submitted with the vote: “I realized I have never read a book from the Middle East. This is what is great about this group. I am reading books I would have never picked up without you posting them. I used to belong to another group which was supposedly international but they often had books by American authors who just visited the different countries. I already read too many American authors. Thank you all for putting together this group and supporting expanding my book shelf!!!”

We’re thrilled you appreciate this group and the diversity of reading native authors from countries around the world.

BUT WHAT BOOK ARE WE READING for the club?

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Winner of France’s Lagardère Prize, short-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction

In her award-winning novel, Inaam Kachachi portrays the dual tragedy of her native land: America’s failure and the humiliation of Iraq.

The American Granddaughter depicts the American occupation of Iraq through the eyes of a young Iraqi-American woman, who returns to her country as an interpreter for the US Army. Through the narrator’s conflicting emotions, we see the tragedy of a country which, having battled to emerge from dictatorship, then finds itself under foreign occupation.

At the beginning of America’s occupation of Iraq, Zeina returns to her war-torn homeland as an interpreter for the US Army. Her formidable grandmother—the only family member that Zeina believes she has in Iraq—gravely disapproves of her granddaughter’s actions. Then Zeina meets Haider and Muhaymin, two “brothers” she knows nothing of, and falls deeply in love with Muhaymin, a militant in the Al Mehdi Army. These experiences force her to question all her values.

“We let ourselves be won over by this novel that describes with such faithfulness and emotion the tearing apart of a country and a woman forever caught between two shores. The book poetically explores the stinging sorrow of grasping at the past, the link between language and identity, and the tragic loss of never being able to truly go home again.” —AramcoWorld

(A special thank you to book club member, Jordi Valbuena for the suggestion.)

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org

Happy reading! (If you want to read & discuss the winning book together, join our online book club on Facebook.)

Which Book Should We Read from Iraq?

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Before we get to the vote, I wanted to first apologize for the delay in posting. This month has been particularly difficult for me personally. Since we’re so late with the vote, we’ll be reading the book from Iraq for October. Moving forward, please know that the vote will be posted by the 15th of every month.

To start us off, I’ve included a powerful poem written by a native of Baghdad who lived there until the authorities considered her poetry to be not as innocent as it originally looked. She then fled to the US where she has since published two collections of poetry that also include works about the wars she had experienced: the Iraq–Iran war of 1980–88 and the first Gulf War of 1992 one of which is included below.

“What good luck!
She has found his bones.
The skull is also in the bag
the bag in her hand
like all other bags
in all other trembling hands.
His bones, like thousands of bones
in the mass graveyard,
His skull, not like any other skull.
Two eyes or holes
with which he saw too much,
two ears
with which he listened to music
that told his own story,
a nose
that never knew clean air,
a mouth, open like a chasm,
it was not like that when he kissed her
there, quietly,
not in this place
noisy with skulls and bones and dust
dug up with questions:
What does it mean to die all this death
in a place where the darkness plays all this silence?
What does it mean to meet your loved ones now
With all of these hollow places?
To give back to your mother
on the occasion of death
a handful of bones
she had given to you
on the occasion of birth?
To depart without death or birth certificates
because the dictator does not give receipts
when he takes your life.
The dictator has a skull too, a huge one
not like any other skull.
It solved by itself a math problem
that multiplied the one death by millions
to equal homeland.
The dictator is the director of a great tragedy.
he has an audience, too,
an audience that claps
until the bones begin to rattle ¬
the bones in the bags,
the full bag finally in her hand,
unlike her disappointed neighbor
who has not yet found her own.”

— Dunya Mikhail

THE VOTING

You can vote from now until Fri., Sept. 27 11:30PM on which book you’d like the club to read next. (That's NYC time. See this converted to your local time below.)

Time converter at worldtimebuddy.com

To participate:

1. Review the books.

2. Then, click here to vote.

We'll publish the anonymous results afterwards.