An Iraqi in Paris

A fully revised third edition of this best-selling ‘gem of autobiographical writing’ in the Arab world, by an author who has been called ‘a relentless raconteur’, ‘a modern Odysseus’, ‘the Iraqi Don Quixote’. Providentially leaving Iraq just before Saddam Hussein installs himself as President, the Assyrian boy dreams of becoming a Hollywood filmmaker after his hero John Ford, but after arrest and torture in Syria – accused of being a Jewish spy on account of his name, similar treatment in Jordan, and escaping execution in Lebanon by armed militia, he lands up on the streets of Paris, where he meets up with Jean Valjean and tries to escape his fate as a homeless refugee with wit, humour and amorous adventures, all the while writing the story of his childhood, his deaf-mute father Kika, and film buff Kiryakos. Samuel Shimon, ‘the runaway from museums’, writes an urgently needed ‘manifesto of tolerance’. The first edition (2005) was long-listed for the 2007 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It has editions in Swedish (Alhambra Förlag, 2007), French (Actes Sud, 2008), and forthcoming in 2022 from Maktoob is a Hebrew edition, translated by Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani.