Customer Reviews

The Last of the Angels: A Modern Iraqi Novel

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Wonderful novel (meaning both an object of wonder and full of wonders) by Iraqi poet Fadhil al-Azzawi, about a poor-but-proud, mostly Kurdish community in the city of Kirkuk. The time is the 1950s, as hope of a post-war spring enlivens the aspirations of a ragtag cast of characters. Hopes, however, are dashed over and again despite the occasional triumph against all odds, like the retrieval by zeppelin of two long lost brothers who never returned from WWI. Magical realism is an overused word and doesn't do justice to the flights of perfectly plausible fantasy that propel the narrative forward. Meanwhile, the readiness to suspend disbelief among the inhabitants of the neighborhood makes them susceptible to any far-fetched possibility - like the ascension into heaven of a barber after being shot during an attempt to prevent a road being built through a cemetery by a British-owned petroleum company. Or the appearance of Death as a character, or of angels, both full-size and small.

Politics informs much of the story, as one character instigates a people's revolution (modeled after Mao's), which embarrasses the local do-nothing communists. The young monarch Faisal II makes an appearance, before he is assassinated, and the Ba'ath party dictatorship begins to assume prominence. The latent bloodthirstiness of the mob, as it emerges at times, is countered with increasingly brutal force by those in power, and we read accounts of torture in prisons, drawn from al-Azzawi's own experience as a political prisoner of Saddam Hussein before the author's eventual exile in the 1970s.

The final chapters flash forward to the 1990s, which are represented in an apocalyptic vision reminiscent of Revelations. Hope struggles in mortal combat with despair, and it is not until the last sentence that we fully appreciate the book's title. The story, as it is told, ranges from playfulness and comedy to scenes of utter horror. That it embraces so much without losing its coherence is a considerable achievement, and a generously rich translation has been provided by William Hutchins. The Free Press edition includes a brief glossary, a study guide for group discussion, and an interview with the author.

This is billed as an Arab novel in the tradition of Naguib Mahfouz. Since I've read some of Mahfouz and enjoyed his work, I thought I might give this book a try. The book starts promisingly enough, but wanders off into irrelevance and incoherence by the end.

Hameed, the main character, works for a British petroleum company as a driver. The time (you guess from later in the book) is the early 1950s. When he propositions the wife of one of the people he drives around, he's fired, and this incident (which leads to his being nicknamed Hameed "Nylon", because he offered her a pair of them as a gift) is the starting point for the novel.

Hameed, you see, is blameless. After all, he was driving this woman around half-naked, and she regularly visited a lover who wasn't her husband. As a result, it was only natural that a man would proposition her, and completely unfair for him to be fired as a result. His firing results in demonstrations and even rioting, though of course everyone ridicules him about the nylons.

So the story starts there, and wanders all over the landscape. Magical things happen at various parts of the book: there are mythical people inside a box in one person's attic, ghosts inhabit various rooms in buildings, and Death himself makes an appearance several times. One of the main characters journeys to Russia to find his long lost brothers, missing since the First World War, and returns with them, in a blimp which he pilots himself, and which is just not mentioned after he lands it at home. As the book progresses, things get more and more unbelievable, more and more incoherent, more and more just silly.

I did enjoy parts of this book, but I must say that overall I didn't enjoy it that much. I would recommend it only to those who are interested in Arab culture and society.

Due to my age(old), I am quick to toss any book(or video) that doesn't sustain a high level of interest/entertainment. In the first third there were many tidbits, even moments of unexpected poetry. Then I found it too tedious.

I enjoyed the comedy of the every day life of the arab in this book.
It has opened up a view of life in a part of the world I did not know anything about. Some of the stories were entertaining and some were very sad. This is a good read.