Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family

ISBN: 0061240400

Author: Chalabi, Tamara

Condition: Used

Its an admirable endeavor to have Iraq addressed by someone who is in so many ways able to approach it from two worlds. . . . Tamara Chalabi has the stuff, in every sense, that is needful to undertake this. -Christopher HitchensIn the tradition of Jung Changs Wild Swans and Bhutto Benazirs Reconciliation comes Tamara Chalabis unique memoir of returning to her familys homeland, Iraq. In this epic story of one daughters journey through the annals of her familys tumultuous history, Chalabis powerful voice and piercing vision illuminate her country and its people as never before.Just ten days after Baghdads fall in 2003, Tamara Chalabi arrived in the city after a lifetime in exile-finally entering the homeland shed known only through stories and her own imagination.Investigating four generations of her familys history at the forefront of Iraqi society, Chalabi offers a rich portrait of Middle Eastern life and a provocative look at a lost Iraq. Unforgettable characters provide glimpses of the end of the Ottoman Empire, the birth of the Iraqi state, the flowering of the Paris of the Middle East, and Iraqs descent into chaos. At once intimate and magisterial, Chalabis memoir of return and reclamation vividly captures the rich history of a country shattered by war and a family that has never forgotten its past.