The Baghdad clock
By: Shahad al-Rāwī ; translated from the Arabic by Luke Leafgren
Contributors: Leafgren, Luke, translator
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 252
ISBN-13: 9781786073242
Copyright date: 2016
Subjects: War stories; Air raid shelters; Teenage girls; Persian Gulf War, 1991; Civil war; Fiction; Imagination; Friendship; Arabic fiction; Dreams
Description: Shortlisted for the international prize for Arabic fiction 2018. For fans of The Kite Runner comes this remarkable debut, the number one bestselling title in Iraq, Dubai and the UAE.  Baghdad, 1991. In the midst of the first Gulf War, a young Iraqi girl huddles with her neighbours in an air raid shelter. There, she meets Nadia. The two girls quickly become best friends and together they imagine a world not torn apart by civil war, sharing their dreams, their hopes and their desires, and their first loves. But as they grow older and the bombs continue to fall, the international sanctions bite and friends begin to flee the country, the girls must face the fact that their lives will never be the same again. This poignant debut novel will spirit readers away to a world they know only from the television, revealing just what it is like to grow up in a city that is slowly disappearing in front of your eyes, and showing how in the toughest times, children can build up the greatest resilience.
Notes: Originally published in Arabic by Dar al-Hikma, 2016.