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Sign up todayThe Sirens of Baghdad
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Learn moreA student at the University of Baghdad must return to his small village home when the Americans invade Iraq. There, he witnesses American soldiers kill the benign village idiot, bomb a wedding, and finally, terrorize his family in his own home. Consumed by the desire for vengeance, the youth leaves for the city, where he is taken in by a radical group. After proving his mettle in several attacks, he is entrusted with a super-secret mission, which he struggles to reconcile with his moral principles.
A masterful look at the effects of violence on ordinary people, The Sirens of Baghdad explores the depths of human nature as it confronts the most horrific circumstances.
Yasmina Khadra is a pen name of Algerian army officer Mohammed Moulessehoul, who is the author of three other books published in English: The Swallows of Kabul, In the Name of God, and Wolf Dreams. He took the feminine pseudonym to avoid submitting his manuscripts for approval by military censors while he was still in the army. He lives in France.
Jason Collins
Over the past twenty-one years, Mr. Collins has been seen on Northwest Stages including The Group Theatre, TAG, Village Theatre, Seattle Shakespeare Company, Seattle Children’s Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre and The Seattle Repertory Theatre. Favorite roles include Seymour in Little Shop Of Horrors, (Village Theatre) and Matt in The Fantasticks, (ACT). Mr. Collins has had the good fortune and distinct pleasure to be involved with two collaborations with Speeltheatre, Holland at the Seattle Children’s Theatre; Nicky Somewhere Else and more recently Glittra’s Mission. Mr. Collins has received three prestigious Footlight Awards for his work as Huck Finn in Big River and Valentine LaMar in Babes In Arms, (both with Village Theatre) and Finn in Into The West (for Seattle Children’s Theatre). In addition to Live Theatre, Mr. Collins can be heard on the original cast recordings of David Austin’s A Christmas Carol and Bucket Of Blood.
John Cullen is the translator of many books from Spanish, French, German, and Italian, including Margaret Mazzantini’s Don’t Move, Yasmina Khadra’s Middle East trilogy (The Swallows of Kabul, The Attack, The Sirens of Baghdad), Christa Wolf’s Medea, and Manuel de Lope’s The Wrong Blood. He lives in upstate New York.
Reviews
“Yasmina Khadra’s work has been compared to that of his Algerian compatriot Albert Camus, and The Sirens of Baghdad has a similar blaze of heat, the same heavy, insoluble questions and the same need to face them down, even to one’s death…The novel builds to a startling and wrenching finish.”
“Like all the great storytellers of history, Khadra espouses the contradictions of his characters, who carry in themselves the entirety of the human condition.”
“An astonishing novel with overtones of Camus…It’s simply admirable…a magisterial work of fiction.”
“Couldn’t be more timely…[Khadra] manages to make the thoughts of a suicide bomber accessible to a Western readership, even as the scope of the terrorist’s intended target…will send a shiver down the spine of most readers…Khadra manages to inject a note of hope toward the end, without betraying his powerful message of how the occupation of Iraq has brutalized both the Iraqis and the Americans.”
“With sincere-sounding feeling, Jason Collins delivers the story of a young man’s quest to repudiate his homeland, war-ravaged Iraq. Collins creates distinctive personas for the novel’s various male characters—in particular capturing the young protagonist’s anger with society as well as his turmoil at finding himself displaced in the world. Somber, with a slightly angry edge, the story builds as the quiet youth is urged by a radical group to make a difference. Collins delivers his lines in an increasingly clipped and hard-bitten tone as the plot escalates. With his masterful delivery Collins propels the listener through an intense story.”
“This is Khadra’s second novel about a phenomenon that mystifies so many Westerners—the educated, intelligent Arab terrorist…it dramatically embodies the points about cultural clash that Meic Pearse argues in Why the Rest Hate the West (2004). That is, it shows why crystal-clearly.”
“Perhaps the most frighteningly plausible doomsday scenario yet to appear in fictional treatments of this seemingly insoluble crisis. And if it doesn’t scare the hell out of you, you’re not paying enough attention.”
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