The corpse washer /
"If death is a postman then I am one of those who receive his letters every day. I am the one who takes them out carefully from their bloodied and torn envelopes. I am the one who washes them, who removes the stamps of death and dries and perfumes them, mumbling what I don't really believe...
| Uniform title: | Waḥdahā shajarat al-rummān. |
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| Author / Creator: | |
| Format: | eBook Electronic |
| Language: | English Arabic |
| Imprint: | New Haven : Yale University Press, [2013] |
| Series: | Margellos world republic of letters book.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Click here for full text at JSTOR |
| Summary: | "If death is a postman then I am one of those who receive his letters every day. I am the one who takes them out carefully from their bloodied and torn envelopes. I am the one who washes them, who removes the stamps of death and dries and perfumes them, mumbling what I don't really believe in. Then I wrap them carefully in white so they may reach their last reader: the grave," writes Jawad, the narrator and protagonist of The Corpse Washer. Born to traditional Shi'ite family of corpse washers and shrouders in Baghdad, Jawad decides to abandon the family tradition, choosing instead to become a sculptor, to celebrate life rather than tend to death. But the 2003 invasion and military occupation unleash sectarian violence and Jawad returns to the inevitable washing and shrouding.--[book cover]. Acclaimed and celebrated in the Arab world for its vivid portrait of Iraq, this heartbreaking novel confronts the war-torn nation's horrifying recent history Young Jawad, born to a traditional Shi'ite family of corpse washers and shrouders in Baghdad, decides to abandon the family tradition, choosing instead to become a sculptor, to celebrate life rather than tend to death. He enters Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts in the late 1980s, in defiance of his father's wishes and determined to forge his own path. But the circumstances of history dictate otherwise. Saddam Hussein's dictatorship and the economic sanctions of the 1990s destroy the socioeconomic fabric of society. The 2003 invasion and military occupation unleash sectarian violence. Corpses pile up, and Jawad returns to the inevitable washing and shrouding. Trained as an artist to shape materials to represent life aesthetically, he now must contemplate how death shapes daily life and the bodies of Baghdad's inhabitants. Through the struggles of a single desperate family, Sinan Antoon's novel shows us the heart of Iraq's complex and violent recent history. Descending into the underworld where the borders between life and death are blurred and where there is no refuge from unending nightmares, Antoon limns a world of great sorrows, a world where the winds wail. |
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| Item Description: | "First published in 2010 in Arabic as Waḥdahā shajarat al-rummān by al-Muʼassasah al-ʻArabīyah lil-Dirāsāt wa-al-Nashr, Beirut, Lebanon"--Title page verso. Print version record. |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (vii, 185 pages) |
| Awards: | Winner, Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, 2014. |
| ISBN: | 0300195052 9780300195057 |
| Author Notes: |