Seen through the eyes of a strong-willed and perceptive young girl, Naphtalene beautifully captures the atmosphere of Baghdad in the 1940s and 1950s. Through her rich and lyrical descriptions, Alia Mamdouh vividly recreates a city of public steam baths, roadside butchers, and childhood games played in the same streets where political demonstrations against British colonialism are beginning to take place. At the heart of the novel is nine-year-old Huda, a girl whose fiery, defiant nature contrasts sharply with her own inherent powerlessness. Through Mamdouh's strikingly inventive use of language, Huda's stream-of-consciousness narrative expands to take in the life not only of a young girl and her family, but of her street, her neighborhood, and her country. Alia Mamdouh, winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Award in Arabic Literature, is a journalist, essayist and novelist living in exile in Paris. Long banned from publishing in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, she is the author of essays, short stories, and four novels, of which Naphtalene is the most widely acclaimed and translated.

Naphtalene: A Novel of Baghdad (Women Writing the Middle East)

Literature & Fiction

Mamdouh, Alia

Literary

The Feminist Press at CUNY

Seen through the eyes of a nine-year old girl, Huda, this novel captures the atmosphere of Baghdad in the 1940s. A city of public steam baths, of roadside butchers, of spinning tops and childhood games played in the streets, streets where political demonstrations are beginning to take place. With real perception the complex web of family relationships is illustrated by the tension between the fiery and feisty nature of Huda and her powerlessness as a child. Huda's father, a prison guard and a bully, hides his weakness beneath apparent strength. He drives his desperately ill wife from the family home, replacing her with his pregnant second wife. But Huda has two allies; her devoted and beloved brother Adil and her grandmother, who is the real power in the family.

Mothballs (Arab Women Writers)

Theroux, Peter

Mamduh, Aliyah

Garnet Pub Ltd

La Garçonne

Actes-sud

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.

The Loved Ones (Modern Arabic Literature (Hardcover))

Contemporary

The American University in Cairo Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Mamdouh, Alia. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Mamdouh, Alia