By: Ali Bader, Amira Noweira (Transcribed by)

Hardcover

Click on the Google Preview image above to read some pages of this book!

First published in Arabic in 2008, The Tobacco Keeper relates the investigation of the life of a celebrated Jewish Iraqi musician who was expelled to Israel in the 1950s. Having returned to Iraq, via Iran, the musician is thrown out as an Israeli spy. Returning for the third time under a forged passport, he is murdered in mysterious circumstances. Arriving in Baghdad's Green Zone during the US-led occupation, a journalist writing a story about the musician's life discovers an underworld of fake identities, mafias and militias. Even among the journalists, there is a secret world of identity games, fake names and ulterior motives.

The publisher has done English readers a great service by translating this novel from the Arabic. So rich and wryly described is The Tobacco Keeper that on nearing the end I only wished for another 300 pages on which this enthralling tapestry could continue -- Sholto Byrnes The Independent on Sunday ...a complex, emotionally charged novel of masks and shifting identities Egypt Independent Bader is adept at showing how the past is interwoven with the present in contemporary Arab urban culture and society. His descriptions are powerful and authentic. The Jordan Times

ISBN: 9789992142622
ISBN-10: 9992142626
Audience: General
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 336
Published: 22nd May 2012
Dimensions (cm): 19.8 x 12.9  x 2.5
Weight (kg): 0.408