Bokelskere.no

Boken er oversatt til engelsk under tittelen Farewell, Babylon, den engelske utgaven presenteres slik:

From the melting pot that was Iraqi society comes a tale, recounted by a grand old man of Canadian letters, of growing up as a Jewish boy in Baghdad in the 1940s.Naim Kattan was born into an intellectual Jewish family in Baghdad in 1928. He, his brother, and his friend Nessim were the only Jews in a group of young men who met every evening in a cafe to talk passionately abut creating a national Iraqi literature in their newly independent country. They had good reason, for although the Jewish community in Iraq dated back 2500 years, and Jews were abmong the best Arabic scholars in the country, they were never considered equals by the Muslim majority.In 1941, after British forces defeated the German-backed Iraqi insurgents, angry Bedouins entered Baghdad before it could be secured and began the Farhoud, the massacre of Jews in the city. The violence stopped just short of the Kattans' house, but the family immediately began the long application process for visas. Kattan began selling stories to literary magazines and speculating about the role of women in a country where even Jewish women wore veils. He eventually won a scholarship to the Sorbonne and left his family, not to be reunited with them until five years later, when he found them in a settlement camp in IsraelThis is a memoir of identity, of growing up in a tumultuous polyglot society, of change both personal and societal, of finding one's place in life. Here is a fascinating portrait of a people, a city, a state, and a culture that are as troubled today as Kattan found them sixty years ago.

På tittelbladet i min franske utgave står det "Roman" - men både forfatterens eget forord, og forordet til Michel Tournier, underbygger undertittelen "Mémoires d'un Juif d'Irak". Så: fiksjon eller erindringer? Kanskje en blanding?

Bruker talentet mitt til en kommentar hinsides Naim Kattan' s "Farewell Babylon". :)
Hvis du fortsatt reiser rundt i Canada og har tenkt deg sørover til grensetraktene til USA - så er årets Shaw- festival godt i gang i Niagara on the Lake - som en gang i tiden var hovedstad og som er en av Canada's mest sjarmerende byer - og som foruten å huse en årlig Shaw- festival - er kjent for sitt omland med vingårder som lager verdens beste Icewine.
Jeg drar til Toronto en tur utpå høsten - og legger turen til Niagara on the Lake for påfyll av kultur og Icewine.

Meget interessant - til neste Canada-reise! Jeg sitter nå på toget fra Québec til flyplassen i Montréal, så du skjønner at å smette inn Shaw-festivalen blir bittelite grann umulig denne gang. Men jeg setter pris på tipset, for dette hadde jeg aldri hørt om - heller ikke om sjarm-faktoren til N on the L (må Google etterpå: er det byen på canadisk side av fossen? Eller en by med samme navn annetsteds?). Du får bruke talentet til å rapportere litt fra Niagara on the lake i en (mer eller mindre) passende tråd her inne til høsten!!!