About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherSteerforth Press

ISBN-101953861407

ISBN-139781953861405

eBay Product ID (ePID)3057275786

Product Key Features

Book TitleLast Pomegranate Tree

Number of Pages321 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2023

TopicLiterary, Political, Linguistics / General

GenreFiction, Language Arts & Disciplines

AuthorBachtyar Ali

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.8 in

Item Weight12.4 Oz

Item Length5.9 in

Item Width6.8 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

Dewey Edition23

Reviews"A tour de force . . . The urban scenes contribute to the author's in-the-round portrait of his homeland, showing us more than bunkers and bomb craters, suggesting fertility and possibility . . . Isn't it a fine novel that sustains such counterpoint? Alive with the tension between humanity and hatred?" --John Domini, Brooklyn Rail "Superbly realized novel of life, death, and what lies between . . . Blending magical realism with dark fables worthy of Kafka, Kurdish novelist Ali spins episodes that require the willing suspension of disbelief while richly rewarding that surrender . . . Altogether extraordinary: a masterwork of modern Middle Eastern literature deserving the widest possible audience." -- Kirkus Reviews , starred review "Kaleidoscopic and mesmerizing . . . Ali's novel is a visionary wonder that plunges into the dreamscape of a people's fraught memory. For readers, this is unforgettable." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review "A lot of contemporary American fiction is stuck in this . . . false dichotomy between "auto-fiction" and "social realism" and it was really nice to read Ali who comes in like a graceful bull in a china shop, telling a heart-breaking, gut-wrenching story." --William Lennon, publisher, Cleveland Review of Books "Bachtyar Ali's skillful, seamless movement between history and mythologies is unique in its political engagement and cultural depths. A major writer of our time." --Rawi Hage, author of Stray Dogs, "A tour de force . . . The urban scenes contribute to the author's in-the-round portrait of his homeland, showing us more than bunkers and bomb craters, suggesting fertility and possibility . . . Isn't it a fine novel that sustains such counterpoint? Alive with the tension between humanity and hatred?" --John Domini, Brooklyn Rail "Superbly realized novel of life, death, and what lies between . . . Blending magical realism with dark fables worthy of Kafka, Kurdish novelist Ali spins episodes that require the willing suspension of disbelief while richly rewarding that surrender . . . Altogether extraordinary: a masterwork of modern Middle Eastern literature deserving the widest possible audience." -- Kirkus Reviews , starred review "Kaleidoscopic and mesmerizing . . . Ali's novel is a visionary wonder that plunges into the dreamscape of a people's fraught memory. For readers, this is unforgettable." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review "A lot of contemporary American fiction is stuck in this . . . false dichotomy between "auto-fiction" and "social realism" and it was really nice to read Ali who comes in like a graceful bull in a china shop, telling a heart-breaking, gut-wrenching story." --William Lennon, publisher, Cleveland Review of Books "Bachtyar Ali's skillful, seamless movement between history and mythologies is unique in its political engagement and cultural depths. A major writer of our time." --Rawi Hage, author of Stray Dogs "After spending his years in prison trying to forget -- "all my memories turned to sand" --Muzafar is released from his desert confinement and immediately tries to locate his son. It is this persistent search for truth that lies at the heart of The Last Pomegranate Tree . . . Ali shows his readers that while truth at first seems a monolith, a different perspective can reveal a new aspect, a new verity, equally as valid as the first." --Andrea Blatz, Asymptote Journal, "Bachtyar Ali's skillful, seamless movement between history and mythologies is unique in its political engagement and cultural depths. A major writer of our time." --Rawi Hage, author of Stray Dogs, "A tour de force . . . The urban scenes contribute to the author's in-the-round portrait of his homeland, showing us more than bunkers and bomb craters, suggesting fertility and possibility . . . Isn't it a fine novel that sustains such counterpoint? Alive with the tension between humanity and hatred?" --John Domini, Brooklyn Rail "Superbly realized novel of life, death, and what lies between . . . Blending magical realism with dark fables worthy of Kafka, Kurdish novelist Ali spins episodes that require the willing suspension of disbelief while richly rewarding that surrender . . . Altogether extraordinary: a masterwork of modern Middle Eastern literature deserving the widest possible audience." -- Kirkus Reviews , starred review "Kaleidoscopic and mesmerizing . . . Ali's novel is a visionary wonder that plunges into the dreamscape of a people's fraught memory. For readers, this is unforgettable." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review "A lot of contemporary American fiction is stuck in this . . . false dichotomy between "auto-fiction" and "social realism" and it was really nice to read Ali who comes in like a graceful bull in a china shop, telling a heart-breaking, gut-wrenching story." --William Lennon, publisher, Cleveland Review of Books "Bachtyar Ali's skillful, seamless movement between history and mythologies is unique in its political engagement and cultural depths. A major writer of our time." --Rawi Hage, author of Stray Dogs "After spending his years in prison trying to forget -- "all my memories turned to sand" --Muzafar is released from his desert confinement and immediately tries to locate his son. It is this persistent search for truth that lies at the heart of The Last Pomegranate Tree . . . Ali shows his readers that while truth at first seems a monolith, a different perspective can reveal a new aspect, a new verity, equally as valid as the first." --Andrea Blatz, Asymptote Journal Another superb novel from Bachtyar Ali, mixing reality, and a very unpleasant reality at that, with myth and fantasy, while telling a complex and first-class story which illuminates the problems that the Iraqi Kurds have lived through. There is no doubt that Bachtyar Ali should be better known in the West. -- The Modern Novel "The story isn't told in a linear fashion-it loops around, backward and forward in time, in circles or a spiral. Thoughts, musings, and descriptions are repeated, in poetic language that can sometimes evoke a bedtime story." --New York Kurdish Cultural Center " The Last Pomegranate Tree , a modern Kurdish fable, is an immersive, entertaining tale that fuses the charm of ancient legend with the harsh reality of contemporary history. It honours a generation lost or, worse, hardened to death and disaster by years of hostility--both coming from outside the troubled region and arising from within." --Joseph Schreiber, Rough Ghosts, "A tour de force . . . The urban scenes contribute to the author's in-the-round portrait of his homeland, showing us more than bunkers and bomb craters, suggesting fertility and possibility . . . Isn't it a fine novel that sustains such counterpoint? Alive with the tension between humanity and hatred?" --John Domini, Brooklyn Rail "Superbly realized novel of life, death, and what lies between . . . Blending magical realism with dark fables worthy of Kafka, Kurdish novelist Ali spins episodes that require the willing suspension of disbelief while richly rewarding that surrender . . . Altogether extraordinary: a masterwork of modern Middle Eastern literature deserving the widest possible audience." -- Kirkus Reviews , starred review "Kaleidoscopic and mesmerizing . . . Ali's novel is a visionary wonder that plunges into the dreamscape of a people's fraught memory. For readers, this is unforgettable." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review "A lot of contemporary American fiction is stuck in this . . . false dichotomy between "auto-fiction" and "social realism" and it was really nice to read Ali who comes in like a graceful bull in a china shop, telling a heart-breaking, gut-wrenching story." --William Lennon, publisher, Cleveland Review of Books "Bachtyar Ali's skillful, seamless movement between history and mythologies is unique in its political engagement and cultural depths. A major writer of our time." --Rawi Hage, author of Stray Dogs "After spending his years in prison trying to forget -- "all my memories turned to sand" --Muzafar is released from his desert confinement and immediately tries to locate his son. It is this persistent search for truth that lies at the heart of The Last Pomegranate Tree . . . Ali shows his readers that while truth at first seems a monolith, a different perspective can reveal a new aspect, a new verity, equally as valid as the first." --Andrea Blatz, Asymptote Journal Another superb novel from Bachtyar Ali, mixing reality, and a very unpleasant reality at that, with myth and fantasy, while telling a complex and first-class story which illuminates the problems that the Iraqi Kurds have lived through. There is no doubt that Bachtyar Ali should be better known in the West. -- The Modern Novel

TitleLeadingThe

Dewey Decimal891.5973

SynopsisWhenever he told lies, the birds would fly away. It had been that way since he was a child. Whenever he told a lie, something strange would happen.' So begins Bachtyar Ali's The Last Pomegranate, a phantasmagoric warren of fact, fabrication, and mystical allegory, set in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's rule and Iraq's Kurdish conflict. Muzafar-i Subhdam, a peshmerga fighter, has spent the last twenty-one years imprisoned in a desert yearning for his son, Saryas, who was only a few days old when Muzafar was captured. Upon his release, Muzafar begins a frantic search, only to learn that Saryas was one of three identical boys who became enmeshed in each other's lives as war mutilated the region. An inlet to the recesses of a terrifying historical moment, and a philosophical journey of formidable depths, The Last Pomegranate interrogates the origins and reverberations of atrocity. It also probes, with a graceful intelligence, unforgettable acts of mercy.

LC Classification NumberPK6908.9.E35