Description: 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.
Review Quotes: "Sometimes, very rarely, a poet emerges from the depths of time, emblematic and enigmatic, to embody the horror and the beauty and the compassion and the prophetic clarity so unique to this craft of shaman, as dancer of the broken heart. Such a person is ageless. He is of the company of the ancient ones, the masters. Those who speak directly 'from my heart to your heart.' He speaks of the essential, of the human condition. And we are ashamed. And we weep. Such a man is Salah Al Hamdani. We recognize him. I wish to salute the thin, slightly clothed boy with the torn sandals, and over him an austere sky--from a country where too many child soldiers are buried under the starred flag of the night. I honor the mature, keening exiled poet who now looks at a poor moon in the middle of the night, vibrating to the rhythms of the clouds. May he find peace." --Breyten Breytenbach