Absent: A Novel [Paperback]

Betool Khedairi (Author), Muhayman Jamil (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 10, 2007

Dalal is a young woman living in a crowded Baghdad apartment with the childless aunt and uncle who raised her. In the same building, Umm Mazin, a fortune-teller, offers her customers cures for their physical and romantic ailments, Saad the hairdresser attends to a dwindling number of female customers, and Ilham, a nurse, escapes the stark realities of her hospital job in dreams of her long-lost French mother. Despite the damaging effects of bombings and international sanctions on their world, all the residents try to maintain normal lives.

Hoping to bring in much-needed cash by selling honey, Dalal’s uncle becomes a beekeeper, enlisting Dalal’s help in the care of these temperamental creatures. Meanwhile, Dalal falls in love for the first time–against a background of surprise arrests, personal betrayals, and a crumbling social fabric that turns neighbors into informants.

Tightly crafted and full of vivid, unforgettable characters, Absent is a haunting portrait of life under restrictions, the fragile emotional ties among family and friends, and the resilience of the human spirit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Iraqi-Scot novelist Khedairi (A Sky So Close) tells the story of Dalal, a young girl growing up in a crowded Baghdad apartment complex during the sanctions imposed on Iraq following the Gulf War. The deck is certainly stacked against Dalal: orphaned as a baby, she is raised by her self-absorbed maternal aunt and an uncle, and lives under a cloud of collective political anxiety. Dalal herself, as she reaches her 20s, has a facial paralysis, works several jobs by necessity and attends classes. A cast of kooky neighbors helps her find her way, but while her environment seems safe, it may harbor a menace—a Baath government informant. Time is nebulous in the book, with Dalal floating back and fourth between childhood and adolescence in a way that is by turns gorgeously dreamy and jarring. As the title suggests, Dalal, who narrates, is largely absent from the larger forces at work, and while her observations are sometimes poignant, she rarely takes action or even makes a decision, simply allowing things to happen to her. But Khedairi does paint a lucid and insightful picture of Iraq in the late 1990s. (July)
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Review

“Absent opens a door to a view of Iraqi life we have seldom seen. With a compassionate eye Khedairi explores a community, damaged by wars and sanctions, struggling for survival.”
–Elizabeth Cox, author of The Slow Moon

“A fascinating book and a great pleasure to read: Betool Khedairi is a talented new voice in fiction.”
–Alaa Al Aswany, author of The Yacoubian Building

“Absent is an important book in the way that The Grapes of Wrath and The Kite Runner are important books. Betool Khedairi performs the miraculous feat of transforming Iraq from an abstraction into a world populated by real people devastated by the intrusions of an empire on the other side of the globe.”
–Sarah Bird, author of The Flamenco Academy

“A strong new voice in Iraqi literature.”
–Radio Free Europe

“Brilliant, funny and disturbing, Absent portrays an unforgettable struggle for dignity in a world under siege.”
–Teresa Carpenter, author of The Miss Stone Affair

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (July 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812977424
• ISBN-13: 978-0812977424
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #301,327 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #42 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Middle Eastern > Arabic

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Absent, January 15, 2008

By 

BiLiYA "Biliya" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Absent: A Novel (Paperback)

i spent a lot of time looking for an Iraqi novel, set in Iraq, written by an Iraqi and was not just about war, death, torture and misery. This book gave an interesting and fair account of Iraq during the '90's. I found the normalcy she described refreshing and reflected the times i lived in. The novel is written in a way that it gives its reader a sense that the author had a collection of short stories that she found could be woven together in a clever way.

I did not give it a 5 star rating for several reasons. Some of the historical facts are inaccurate; the inaccuracy was in sequence of events rather than describing the events themselves. I also had a sense that the author was afraid to put in writing how people felt about the conditions they found themselves in and the mass murders that were happening-the rumours that were usually truths. No opinions are given about saddam, the Kuwaiti invasion or the war. her characters did express some opinions about the sanctions, however. Why? are we still afraid to say anything negative about Saddam even now? The author does live in Jordan...