Product Description

"The Long Way Back" tells the story of four generations of the same family living in an old house in the Bab al-Shaykh area of Baghdad. Through the layering of the overlapping worlds of the characters, their private conflicts and passions are set against the wider drama of events leading up to the overthrow of prime minister Abd al-Karim Qasim and the initial steps to power of the Baath party in Iraq in 1962-63. The building-up of the characters and their worlds within a brief and clearly determined period of recent history allows for a portrayal of the ambiguous strengths and weaknesses of Iraqi and wider Arab culture. The dramatization of the relationships between generations, social groups, and genders is achieved with a mixture of humour, irony and compassion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1268713 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-30
• Original language: Arabic
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 388 pages

About the Author
FUND AL-TAKARLI was born in Baghdad and graduated in law from Baghdad University in 1949. He worked in the Ministry of Justice, was made a judge in 1956, and rose to be head of the Court of Appeal in Baghdad. In 1983 he resigned from this post to devote himself to writing. He studied law in Paris from 1964 to 1966 and lived briefly in Paris again during the 1980s. Since 1990 he has lived in Tunis. In 2000 he was awarded the prestigious Owais Prize for the Arabic Novel. CATHERINE COBHAM teaches Arabic at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and has translated a number of contemporary Arab writers, including Yusuf Idris, Naguib Mahfouz, and Hanan al-Shaykh.

Customer Reviews

Read something from Iraq that doesn't involve you know who!
Men, women, boys, girls, life, death, love and hate interwine in this beautifully structured novel from Baghdad. Reading it will introduce you to aspects of life in Iraq that are usually missing in the media.

Humanity against all the odds
From the Stendhal of Iraq we finally get in English a great sample of Iraqi literature. Set in 1960s Baghdad, the story focuses on the life of a group of men and women who persist in their attempt to love and remain humane under difficult conditions.
A great read...

I think this is on of the best novels ever written.
Set at the time of the Iraki dictator, Abdel-Karim Ghasem this novel is the story of Irakis living under guns of their regime in a patriarcal and misogynic society. You can understand then that it would not be easy to be a member of the society and not at all to be a woman then and there.
You find in this book details of the characters' life which make the novel so deep but also it makes it a profound investigation on the Iraki and Arabic society. Al-Takarli is very talented. Irakis are in general very talented.