Notes from a Lost Country
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Saqi Books
Published:2nd Apr '26
Should be back in stock very soon
Sami, a retired doctor, lives with his son and grandchildren in Brooklyn. But Sami keeps losing his way. Every day he sinks deeper into dementia and old memories of life in Iraq before the war.
Omar arrives in the US with a fake identity and no friends or family. Having run away from the Iraqi army, he has been branded a deserter and his ear brutally cut off. Omar carries this mark of shame with him and refuses to talk about the past. He dreams of getting his ear, and his dignity, back.
When their paths cross at least one of them knows that they have met before – if only he could remember where. Exploring the aftermath of war and how the past haunts new beginnings, Notes from a Lost Country creates a moving portrait of life in exile.
‘Sinan Antoon’s Notes From a Lost Country is an unexpectedly soulful novel that deepens the more you stay with it. The book’s two protagonists are traumatized, walled-off, and imperfect men, but one of Antoon’s victories is how he makes us want to spend time with them, understand them, and even root them on. If most novels close down as you finish them, this one never stops opening up. Notes From a Lost Country expands into the past of trauma and the possible future of love, between nations, languages, and into the hidden conflicts inside a diaspora. One can think of few other novels that depict the disorientation, buried pasts, and surrealism of migration into an America seen as it truly is.’ -- Ken Chen, author of Juvenilia
ISBN: 9781849251235
Dimensions: 216mm x 135mm x 23mm
Weight: 350g
240 pages