The Loved Ones
Alia Mamdouh author Marilyn Booth translator
Format:Hardback
Publisher:The American University in Cairo Press
Published:25th Nov '06
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Winner of the 2004 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature
As Suhaila lies in a coma in a Paris hospital, her son Nadir comes to discover her through the multiple narratives that hover around her sickbed: fragments of conversations, memories, and letters. Suhaila comes alive through the stories about her love of dancing, of wine, and of poetry, and the frustrating separation from her only son.
WINNER OF THE NAGUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURE
ONE OF THE 50 MOST IMPORTANT ARABIC NOVELS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (THE NATIONAL)
Suhaila lies in a coma in a Paris hospital. The loved ones of the title are the constellation of friends, predominantly women, who flock to Suhaila’s side from all over the world to envelope her in the warmth of friendship that may ultimately save her and enable her rebirth. Suhaila comes alive through the stories about her: her excesses, her love of dancing, of wine, and of poetry, despite years of abuse by her Iraqi husband, the bleakness of exile from home, and the frustrating separation from her only son.
The Loved Ones is an intimately moving, polyphonic narrative of displacement and nomadism, a disjointed, at times disfigured tale that blends diverse time frames so that the past, the present, and the future are unified, interlocked, and intertwined. This award-winning novel is a hymn to friendship and to boundless giving that ultimately restores life—it is a story about memory and history, a story against forgetting.
"Ferocious, visceral descriptions . . . give a powerful sense not only of Suhaila's world but also of the way we make and understand memories."—Booklist
"Often intense and lyrical."—Kirkus Reviews
"Leaves an indelible impression. [The Loved Ones] is rich with family and neighbors and [Mamdouh] notes all of their subtle interactions and secrets."—Library Journal
“Long after the last lines . . . [there is] a radiant picture of the heroine: her generous character . . . and above all, her love of Iraq. Her son Nader acknowledges that 'she always tows Baghdad into whatever places we have lived, to be able to endure things, to stay alive and not die.”—Arab News
"This novel has a complexity that takes time to progress . . . truly unique."—Multicultural Review
“[In this novel the] strata of events and sensations create a vivid view of Iraqi society at home and abroad with an emphasis on the Iraqi diaspora in the last decade of the millennium. . . . Booth’s translation is a labor of love and talent, a skill coupled with devotion."—Ferial J. Ghazoul, from the Afterword
"[An] intimately moving, polyphonic narrative of displacement and nomadism . . . a hymn to friendship and to boundless giving that ultimately restores life. Written in exile, it invents a language of exile with which to resist dispossession."—Committee of Judges, Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Arabic Literature
ISBN: 9789774249419
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 675g
288 pages