I’jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody

By Sinan Antoon

(City Lights Books, 2007)

    I’jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody, the debut novel by Iraqi-born poet, filmmaker, and Gallatin School of Individualized Study professor Sinan Antoon, was published in English in 2007 after appearing first in Arabic in 2004. The work has been hailed by the London-based pan-Arab daily al-Hayat as “one of the most important Arabic novels…in recent years.” A fictional memoir set in the complex of the General Security headquarters in Baghdad in 1989, the book is a collection of vignettes by a young man in detention that moves from his prison existence to adolescent memories of the Iran-Iraq war to frightening hallucinations, resulting in what Poets and Writers magazine described as “a moving portrait of life in Saddam’s Iraq.” The Los Angeles Times adds that the writer’s “dreams, memories, and fantasies are eerily beautiful.”

                I`jaam, which includes an introduction by Elias Khoury, novelist and Global Distinguished Professor at NYU, was chosen by Kirkus Reviews for its 2007 special issue on debut fiction as one of 25 new and promising voices in fiction. Antoon, who left Iraq during Saddam’s rule, returned in 2003 to co-produce and co-direct About Baghdad, an award-winning documentary about the lives of Iraqis in post-Saddam Iraq, which the New York Times described as “emotionally and intellectually challenging.”