Saleem Haddad was born in Kuwait in 1983, of an Iraqi-German mother and a Palestinian-Lebanese father, whose own mother, a Christian, was displaced to Beirut at the formation of Israel. He was raised between various countries, including Jordan, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Before he published his first novel he worked as an aid worker with Doctors Without Borders in conflict zones from Yemen to Syria and Iraq. He is also queer. Various biographical strands thus combine to make him more qualified than most to explore the maxim: the personal is political.
Iraq
The Mesopotamian high priestess Enheduana lived over 4,000 years ago, but her words ring down to the present: “I am Enheduana.”
In the 1940s, a third of Baghdad was Jewish. Today, fewer than a dozen remain.
Behind the somewhat unprepossessing title, The Watermelon Boys is the story of several several interlocking destinies playing out in what is now Iraq during and immediately after World War I.
Baghdad is not a city readily associated with Christianity. Nevertheless, a small (and shrinking) community lives there. This brief but resonant novel describes the discrimination and abuse they suffer for their faith as well as offering an important insight into how intolerance (of any religion or lifestyle, not just Christianity) can escalate into violence and even war.
Two new non-fiction titles.
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