"The novel’s plot is riveting.... a well-written and fascinating transcription of Iraqi and Palestinian life in the late forties. It is a brilliant commentary upon a specific time and place."—The International Fiction Review"Deserves our full attention and interest."—International Journal of Middle East Studies"Provides crisp and, at times, stark descriptions and analyses of a host of issues and values which dominated Arab political, and social and literary life in the [late forties and] fifties, as represented by the not untypical Baghdad of that period."—Journal of Arabic Literature Jameel Farran, a Christian Arab, is forced to flee his destroyed Jerusalem in 1948. Teaching at Baghdad University, he falls in love with a beautiful Muslim girl, Sulafa, but their turbulent affair meets almost insurmountable obstacles of tradition and circumstance. This is a story of multiple conflicts—between Arab and Jew, desert and city, dictatorship and futile liberal effort, Eastern tradition and Western innovation. Jabra’s Baghdad is a city filled with strife, squalor, and frustration; his picture of the brothels, the streets, the drawing rooms, and the lecture halls is a rich and powerful one, realistic and profoundly disturbing.