Baghdad, Mon Amour: Selected Writings of Salah Al Hamdani

Salah Al Hamdani

Northwestern University Press, Apr 1, 2008 - Biography & Autobiography - 216 pages

Baghdad, Mon Amour is a memoir by Salah Al Hamdani centered on his imprisonment under Saddam Hussein, his subsequent exile in France for more than thirty years, and his emotional return to Baghdad and seeing his family again after all those years with feelings of tremendous joy but also guilt for having “abandoned” them. The beauty of Al Hamdani’s prose and poetry is skillfully captured in Sonia Alland’s translation.

Contents

• Poems: 31
• The Return: 119
• Farewell to Arms: 191

About the author

SALAH AL HAMDANI is a French-Iraqi poet and actor. Born in Baghdad in 1951, he has lived in exile in France for the last three decades. He started writing as a political prisoner in Iraq around the age of twenty. He is also the author of numerous works in both Arabic and French.

SONIA ALLAND lives in both New York City, where she is a longtime public school volunteer, and southern France. She has been translating the works of the French writer Marie Bronsard and has also participated in her husband’s anthropological research in both France and Catalonia, Spain.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Baghdad, Mon Amour: Selected Writings of Salah Al Hamdani
• Author: Salah Al Hamdani
• Translated by: Sonia Alland
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 2008
• ISBN: 1931896445, 9781931896443
• Length: 216 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / General