A forthcoming translation of Antoon’s third novel Ya Mariam, which comes in the wake of latest Isis atrocities, has Antoon wondering: ‘how do you write about a country that is disintegrating?’
“How do you write about a country that is disintegrating?” says Sinan Antoon, on the line from his office at New York University. His words have taken on a more affective valency in recent days, as the notorious militants from Islamic State (Isis) released footage showing the graphic destruction of Assyrian and Akkadian artefacts in Mosul’s central museum.
Talking about the litany of massacres and destructions that the well-funded group has left in the wake of its territorial expansion across Iraq and Syria, Antoon, who describes himself as an Iraqi novelist in America, says “I never imagined Isis”. He was one of a coterie of dissident diasporic Iraqi intellectuals who opposed the 2003 US occupation of his homeland that led to the current post-colonial quagmire.
He explains that during the 1990s, “Iraq was already a society so drained by sanctions, war and dictatorship that to wage another war and with the imperial irresponsibility of the US was bound to produce a chaotic and catastrophic situation.”
In his third novel Ya Maryam (Ave Maria), shortlisted for the 2013 Arabic Booker Prize and with a forthcoming English translation by Maia Tabet, he faithfully reproduces the difficult conversations between an Iraqi Christian family housed in Baghdad while the daily scenes of carnage are painfully recounted.
More
Talking about the litany of massacres and destructions that the well-funded group has left in the wake of its territorial expansion across Iraq and Syria, Antoon, who describes himself as an Iraqi novelist in America, says “I never imagined Isis”. He was one of a coterie of dissident diasporic Iraqi intellectuals who opposed the 2003 US occupation of his homeland that led to the current post-colonial quagmire.
He explains that during the 1990s, “Iraq was already a society so drained by sanctions, war and dictatorship that to wage another war and with the imperial irresponsibility of the US was bound to produce a chaotic and catastrophic situation.”
In his third novel Ya Maryam (Ave Maria), shortlisted for the 2013 Arabic Booker Prize and with a forthcoming English translation by Maia Tabet, he faithfully reproduces the difficult conversations between an Iraqi Christian family housed in Baghdad while the daily scenes of carnage are painfully recounted.
More
No comments:
Post a Comment