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Absent
[Paperback - 2007]
betool khedairi
In Stock
List Price: $16
Our Price: Rs.2395 Rs.1197
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Category: Fiction
Sub-category: Literary Fiction
Publisher: Random House Usa | ISBN: 9780812977424 | Pages: 240
Shipping Weight: .220 | Dimensions: 0

Description

Dalal is a young woman living in a crowded Baghdad apartment with the childless aunt and uncle who raised her. In the same building, Umm Mazin, a fortune-teller, offers her customers cures for their physical and romantic ailments, Saad the hairdresser attends to a dwindling number of female customers, and Ilham, a nurse, escapes the stark realities of her hospital job in dreams of her long-lost French mother. Despite the damaging effects of bombings and international sanctions on their world, all the residents try to maintain normal lives. Hoping to bring in much-needed cash by selling honey, Dalal’s uncle becomes a beekeeper, enlisting Dalal’s help in the care of these temperamental creatures. Meanwhile, Dalal falls in love for the first time–against a background of surprise arrests, personal betrayals, and a crumbling social fabric that turns neighbors into informants. Tightly crafted and full of vivid, unforgettable characters, Absent is a haunting portrait of life under restrictions, the fragile emotional ties among family and friends, and the resilience of the human spirit.

About the Author

Betool Khedairi (Arabic:بتول الخضيري) was born in Baghdad in 1965 to an Iraqi father and a Scottish mother. After receiving her B.A. in French literature from the University of Mustansirya, she divided her time between Iraq, Jordan and the United Kingdom while working in her family’s business. She currently lives in Amman.Her first novel, A Sky So Close, is translated from Arabic into English, Italian, French and Dutch and is the subject of literary critique studies in various international universities.Ghayeb (Absent) is her second novel. The Arabic edition was published in Amman in July 2004.

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