Scan barcode
rosie22's review against another edition
3.0
It was unexpectedly poetic, and fairly philosophical, there was a lot of open ending thoughts from the narrative and serial imaginings peppered with subtle sadness.
It was also less of a girls bond coming of age story, but more about one girl coming to terms with change, change of a friend, her family and her war torn neighbourhood.
I did like it, I think it would be very down to how you interpret the ideas it gives as to whether you enjoy it, but overall pretty good.
It was also less of a girls bond coming of age story, but more about one girl coming to terms with change, change of a friend, her family and her war torn neighbourhood.
I did like it, I think it would be very down to how you interpret the ideas it gives as to whether you enjoy it, but overall pretty good.
shadannn's review against another edition
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
fatima_zubair's review against another edition
4.0
This is quite a book! I hope I can gather my thoughts soon and pen them down for my review. Pray for me!
Final Thoughts
The Baghdad Clock is translated from Arabic to English by Luke Leafgren.
The book revolves around a certain neighborhood in the capital city of Baghdad and its residents and how they save their lives when war strike them by either emigrating to some farway place where it could not affect them or out of the country or choosing to go to war-raid shelters. How when people whom you grow up with, who are like your family or more than that, choose to leave that place because they don't know what mistakes they have made to be hit by missiles and leave nothing but sadness, broken hearts and beautiful memories in tow for those who are left behind, is basically the theme of this book.
.
"Do you really know what it means for a person to remain an exile till the end? That he abandons the mother tongue that has established its spiritual history within him. And that he spends the rest of his life contrary to the laws of this spirit. For that reason, exile is always an exile of the soul, an eternal distance between body and soul that rends a man’s being and throws him into the storm."
"There are people in the neighbourhood – indeed, in every place around the world – about whom forgetting means that we remember their absence, and this absence takes the place of their presence in our lives."
There is also a touch a magical realism, which is in my humble opinion is quite a clever achievement.
You know when you read a book and can't think of what to say or make of it because you don't know how to describe your feelings after reading such deep stuff? Same thing happened with me. I only know this that my heart broke a million times and became whole again because some perspectives were very hopeful but over all the idea of bombing and invading countries like Iraq and other poor countries like this is beyond me as they don't even have enough forces to defend themselves. What is the point of targeting such people when their only (involuntarily) fault is that they are ruled by dictators or they just exist?
"Why did I have to witness all this in a single lifetime? A war in my childhood, sanctions as a teenager, and a new war with advanced smart bombs when I have not yet reached twenty. How can a normal person tell their personal life story when they move from one war to another as they grow up?"
"What had Bush the Father wanted from my life? And what was it that Bush the Son sought from it? How would I tell these stories to my children in the future? How would their grandchildren believe that two presidents of a great nation had pursued my life with rockets?"
.
The thing I felt during my time of reading this book was just sadness. It was engulfing. Like I tried to cheer myself up but couldn't push past it. Because I knew the questions which were asked in this book were so right! Being from a country which is also a big target of drone and terrorist attacks, I could relate to the feeling only I am utterly grateful that we haven't yet stooped that low. I don't know what else to write or say.
.
I haven't read anything regarding Iraq before this and this first experience has just rattled me. Please read this. Especially if you think that bombing these states is not a big deal. We are all humans above anything else and if you have any humanity left in you than you would know what this book is all about!
Final Thoughts
The Baghdad Clock is translated from Arabic to English by Luke Leafgren.
The book revolves around a certain neighborhood in the capital city of Baghdad and its residents and how they save their lives when war strike them by either emigrating to some farway place where it could not affect them or out of the country or choosing to go to war-raid shelters. How when people whom you grow up with, who are like your family or more than that, choose to leave that place because they don't know what mistakes they have made to be hit by missiles and leave nothing but sadness, broken hearts and beautiful memories in tow for those who are left behind, is basically the theme of this book.
.
"Do you really know what it means for a person to remain an exile till the end? That he abandons the mother tongue that has established its spiritual history within him. And that he spends the rest of his life contrary to the laws of this spirit. For that reason, exile is always an exile of the soul, an eternal distance between body and soul that rends a man’s being and throws him into the storm."
"There are people in the neighbourhood – indeed, in every place around the world – about whom forgetting means that we remember their absence, and this absence takes the place of their presence in our lives."
There is also a touch a magical realism, which is in my humble opinion is quite a clever achievement.
You know when you read a book and can't think of what to say or make of it because you don't know how to describe your feelings after reading such deep stuff? Same thing happened with me. I only know this that my heart broke a million times and became whole again because some perspectives were very hopeful but over all the idea of bombing and invading countries like Iraq and other poor countries like this is beyond me as they don't even have enough forces to defend themselves. What is the point of targeting such people when their only (involuntarily) fault is that they are ruled by dictators or they just exist?
"Why did I have to witness all this in a single lifetime? A war in my childhood, sanctions as a teenager, and a new war with advanced smart bombs when I have not yet reached twenty. How can a normal person tell their personal life story when they move from one war to another as they grow up?"
"What had Bush the Father wanted from my life? And what was it that Bush the Son sought from it? How would I tell these stories to my children in the future? How would their grandchildren believe that two presidents of a great nation had pursued my life with rockets?"
.
The thing I felt during my time of reading this book was just sadness. It was engulfing. Like I tried to cheer myself up but couldn't push past it. Because I knew the questions which were asked in this book were so right! Being from a country which is also a big target of drone and terrorist attacks, I could relate to the feeling only I am utterly grateful that we haven't yet stooped that low. I don't know what else to write or say.
.
I haven't read anything regarding Iraq before this and this first experience has just rattled me. Please read this. Especially if you think that bombing these states is not a big deal. We are all humans above anything else and if you have any humanity left in you than you would know what this book is all about!
odyssia's review
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal cruelty, War, Death, and Violence
Minor: Grief
clairewords's review against another edition
4.0
Slightly surreal, nostalgic portrayal of a neighbourhood in Baghdad, of a childhood and early youth lived under the shadow of war, shared by a girl of that neighbourhood who refuses to depict her childhood through the lens of suffering and devastation and thus shares their humanity, their connections, their relations and when she comes close to anything that might be traumatic, lifts off into dreams and the imagination, into other realms, soothed by the souls of the departed, the wisdom of her intuition creating metaphors in her sleep.
Her resilience isn't defiant, it's like a hardy shrub that wants to bloom even in the harshest environment and finds refuge in the imagination. One of her recurring dreams that she enters is the idea that they are living on a ship, one evening the Captain tries to answer her many questions.
She doesn't understand the captains words, but knew he was telling her the truth.
We get to know the families who live and have lived in this neighbourhood, watching them grow and evolve, sharing those moments when they grow out of girlhood and begin to blossom, wondering why the words that boy they'd never paid much attention to whispered in their ear, made them feel so strange inside. We are drawn into their lives until the black Chevrolet arrives and one by one they depart for elsewhere.
Initially one of the residents known as Uncle Shawkat, acts as protector of the abandoned homes, keeping away unwanted racketeers, he writes the names of the departed on the doors, the dates they lived there, and This House is Not for Sale. He too has suffered on account of his wife having left without him, so finds solace in a stray dog he rescued from one of the houses, as much a part of the neighbourhood as them all, with his uncanny way of predicting who will leave next.
Memories are narrated through her friendship with Nadia, who she meets and sleeps next to in the air raid shelter in 1991, they tell each other stories and comfort each other in what becomes the beginning of a long and deep friendship that sustains them through the things that bring discontent, the sanctions, another war, the threat of separation.
It's an unusual novel in it's determination not to resort to pessimism, despite the suffering and loss that is around them, instead it recalls memories of childhood and growing up, of friendship and budding love, of mother's sitting around listening to the predictions and advice of the soothsayer.
It is a lament for days gone by, remembered by the young not the old, who know their children will grow up in other lands, other cultures, with little knowledge of their forebears, of their ways, their neighbourhood, the friendships that shaped them.
Her resilience isn't defiant, it's like a hardy shrub that wants to bloom even in the harshest environment and finds refuge in the imagination. One of her recurring dreams that she enters is the idea that they are living on a ship, one evening the Captain tries to answer her many questions.
Listen my dear. The ship is an idea in your head and I am an idea in the head of the ship. Small ideas usually have delicate wings and when they lose their value on the earth, they fly up into space. The world we live in is just an idea made by the imagination of an inventive creator, and when he found it to be complicated, he began explaining it by means of other, smaller ideas...
We are prisoners of our imaginations, and our experiences in the world of reality consist only of ideas.
And don't tell anyone, because people only believe things that come independently to their minds. Yet they don't know where the mind is to be found.
She doesn't understand the captains words, but knew he was telling her the truth.
Sometimes there are things we do not understand, and we know their meaning, not through words but rather, the meaning is already inside us before others talk to us about it. Some meanings exist inside us but are sleeping. Then words that we understand come and wake us up.
We get to know the families who live and have lived in this neighbourhood, watching them grow and evolve, sharing those moments when they grow out of girlhood and begin to blossom, wondering why the words that boy they'd never paid much attention to whispered in their ear, made them feel so strange inside. We are drawn into their lives until the black Chevrolet arrives and one by one they depart for elsewhere.
Initially one of the residents known as Uncle Shawkat, acts as protector of the abandoned homes, keeping away unwanted racketeers, he writes the names of the departed on the doors, the dates they lived there, and This House is Not for Sale. He too has suffered on account of his wife having left without him, so finds solace in a stray dog he rescued from one of the houses, as much a part of the neighbourhood as them all, with his uncanny way of predicting who will leave next.
Memories are narrated through her friendship with Nadia, who she meets and sleeps next to in the air raid shelter in 1991, they tell each other stories and comfort each other in what becomes the beginning of a long and deep friendship that sustains them through the things that bring discontent, the sanctions, another war, the threat of separation.
It's an unusual novel in it's determination not to resort to pessimism, despite the suffering and loss that is around them, instead it recalls memories of childhood and growing up, of friendship and budding love, of mother's sitting around listening to the predictions and advice of the soothsayer.
Nadia and I were born during the war with Iran. We got to know each other during Desert Storm. We grew up in the years of the sanctions and the second Gulf War. George Bush and his son George W. Bush, took turns firing missiles and illegal weapons at our childhood, while Bill Clinton and that old woman Madeleine Albright were satisfied with starving us. And when we grew up, hell sat in wait for us.
It is a lament for days gone by, remembered by the young not the old, who know their children will grow up in other lands, other cultures, with little knowledge of their forebears, of their ways, their neighbourhood, the friendships that shaped them.
We are the last teardrop aboard the ship, the last smile, the last sigh, the last footstep on its ageing pavement. We are the last people to line their eyes with its dust. We are the ones who will tell its full story. We will tell it to neighbours' children born in foreign countries, to their grandchildren not yet born - we, the witnesses of everything that happened.
beabooks's review against another edition
4.0
Fills into the Reading Women Challenge 2021 (20) A Book by an Arab Author in Translation.
madelineb's review
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
ryner's review against another edition
2.0
A young girl narrates this story of life in Iraq following the invasion of Kuwait and leading up to the Iraq War bombings and invasion of 2003, all from the microcosm of her middle-class Baghdad neighborhood.
I wanted to like this book more than I actually did, but ultimately two things got to me: foremost, I had difficulty with the magical realism -- as a reader, I don't enjoy feeling unclear about what was real and what was imagined. I also felt acutely the lack of real plot, or at least a story arc in the traditional sense. Disappointing, as I was quite drawn to the cover and have enjoyed a number of other contemporary middle eastern fiction titles in the past few years.
I received this ARC via LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.
I wanted to like this book more than I actually did, but ultimately two things got to me: foremost, I had difficulty with the magical realism -- as a reader, I don't enjoy feeling unclear about what was real and what was imagined. I also felt acutely the lack of real plot, or at least a story arc in the traditional sense. Disappointing, as I was quite drawn to the cover and have enjoyed a number of other contemporary middle eastern fiction titles in the past few years.
I received this ARC via LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.
liarose95's review against another edition
4.0
There were some incredible passages in here --and the friendship between the two main characters was very compelling. I also loved the last few chapters and the unique, mystical ending.