Synopsis
Longlisted for the 2007 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Nominated for the Lettre Ulysses Award 2006. An autobiographical novel within a novel by London-based Iraqi author Samuel Shimon, translated from Arabic. "A cunningly iconoclastic storyteller... with a keen cinematographic and unflinching eye for detail... a relentless raconteur" Anton Shammas A young Iraqi leaves home to become a Hollywood film-maker, but finds himself jailed, tortured, and thrown out of the first three countries on his voyage, in Syria, in East Beirut and in Jordan. Seeking refuge with the Palestinians in west Beirut, he finds his way to Hollywood barred. Later, living on the streets of Paris as a homeless refugee and writer, he dreams of making a film about his father, the deaf dumb baker who loves the young Queen of England, possibly starring Robert de Niro. Samuel Shimon's first novel is a riveting tale of innocence and dreams, misery and humour, in which Arabic and Assyrian languages meet Hollywood and the films of John Ford in the streets of Paris and Iraq. Born in 1956 into a poor Assyrian family in al-Habbaniyah, Iraq, Samuel Shimon started work at the age of six. He left Iraq in 1979 and after hair-raising experiences landed up in Paris, where he set up a small poetry press, Gilgamesh Editions. Resettled in the UK in the mid-1990s, in 1998 he founded Banipal magazine of modern Arab literature, and in 2003 set up his own, now hugely popular, Arabic independent literary website www.kikah.com, named after his deaf-dumb father.
Samuel Shimon left Iraq in 1979, setting out for a new life and a youthful dream of becoming a film director in Hollywood. Passing through Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, he was arrested, jailed, and tortured. Eventually, he made his way to Paris where he lived on the streets. There he envisaged a film about his deaf-mute father, a man who idealised the young Queen Elizabeth of England. Shimon dreamed of Robert de Niro playing his father, and wrote the ‘The Street Boy and the Cinema’, which is also the story of Shimon’s Iraqi childhood. ‘The Street Boy and the Cinema’ is the second part of ‘An Iraqi in Paris’, functioning as an independent narrative. It’s clear right from the outset that Shimon is a larger-than-life character, meeting his problems and the various twists of fate with humour and resilience. A love of cinema saves him on one occasion from being shot. But real life actors and film directors wander into the Parisian section of the narrative: Marcello Mastroianni, Jean-Luc Goddard, Marco Ferreri and others. They appear in fleeting glimpses, on the street or in cafés. Meanwhile, Shimon meets many others in exile, from the Arab world and elsewhere. Many of these people too are vibrant personalities, or maybe it’s just the irrepressible writing style of Shimon that brings them so much to life. All sorts of bizarre episodes befall him throughout the book. And he doesn’t hold back where his romantic and sexual escapades are concerned. Both narratives are full of dark episodes, detailing life on the streets of Paris, and a childhood of relative poverty, and yet Shimon writes with such humour and optimism that he makes the whole book a delight to read. ’An Iraqi in Paris’ offers interesting insights into the diversity of Arabic cultures and nations and the truth behind the Islamic monoculture so often portrayed in the Western media. It’s a thoroughly engaging book with an irrepressible narrator. © Kara Kellar Bell Reproduced with permission
Kara Kellar Bell
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