“Living With Death in Baghdad”
This piece was written by Sinan Antoon, for the New York Times, published on July 20th, 2016
Excerpts below.
When I was growing up in Baghdad, my favorite part of the city was Karrada, the neighborhood on the eastern bank of the Tigris where a bomb went off on July 3, killing at least 250 people. I would often go there just to stroll down its elegant streets. The main one was lined with stylish boutiques and stores selling delicious fresh juice and sandwiches. Attractive women and handsome …

Sinan Antoon wrote this piece for The Guardian, April 19th, 2016
There was a time when one could speak Arabic on a flight in the United States, or even read a book written in that language, without hesitation or the fear of suffering humiliating consequences. That time is long gone. Many colleagues and friends confess that they try to avoid carrying Arabic or Persian books on flights in order not to invite suspicious looks.

By Farid Farid, for The Guardian, March 2015
“How do you write about a country that is disintegrating?” says Sinan Antoon, on the line from his office at New York University. His words have taken on a more affective valency in recent days, as the notorious militants from Islamic State (Isis) released footage showing the graphic destruction of Assyrian and Akkadian artefacts in Mosul’s central museum.

Betty Rosen for The Point Magazine, March 2016.
Below a few excerpts. VisitThe Point Magazine‘s website for the full article.
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Of the abundant works of fiction produced by Iraqi writers in the past ten years, Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer and Hassan Blasim’s The Corpse Exhibition are two of the comparatively few to have appeared in English translation. Antoon published his novel The Corpse Washer in Arabic in 2010 and his own English translation in 2013. The Corpse Exhibition, published in English in 2014 in a translation by Jonathan Wright, contains short …

We’re very proud to share this news: The 2014 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation will be awarded this week to Sinan Antoon for the translation of his own novel The Corpse Washer, published by Yale University Press.
 Paula Haydar is highly commended for her translation of June Rain by Jabbour Douaihy, published by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing.
Both June Rain and The Corpse Washer are on RAYA’s list of represented titles.
 The judging panel comprised literary translator and joint winner of the 2013 Prize Jonathan Wright, translator and writer Lulu Norman, broadcaster and writer Paul Blezard, and Banipal editor and trustee Samuel Shimon. They met in December 2014 …

Both Maha and Yusif are not real people. They are characters in Ya Maryam, the novel I started writing after the attack against Sayyidat al-Najat in 2010 and published in Arabic in 2012. But there are hundreds of thousands of real Mahas and Yusifs.