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.

Christina Phillips is Lecturer of Arabic Literature at the University of Exeter. She began translating Arabic fiction as a PhD student at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Her translations include Morning and Evening Talk (2008) by Nobel Prize Winner Naguib Mahfouz and Like A Summer Never to be Repeated (2009) by Mohamed Berrada. Piers Amodia translates from Arabic, Italian and Spanish into English. He spent eight years in the merchant navy before going to Edinburgh University to study Arabic. He lived briefly in Cairo teaching Italian before moving to Rome where he works as a translator for the Vatican. Samuel Shimon was born into a poor Assyrian family in Iraq in 1956. He left his country in 1979 to go to Hollywood and become a filmmaker, travelling via Damascus, Amman, Beirut, Nicosia, Cairo and Tunis. In 1985 he settled in Paris as a refugee. He began writing short stories in 1979, and poetry in 1985. In 1996 he settled in London, UK. In 1998 he co-founded Banipal magazine of modern Arab literature in English translation, and in 2020 started a Spanish edition. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described him as “the Initiator” and “a tireless missionary for literary matters”.