By: Grant Barber

Grant Barber — Wed, 06 May 2020 06:15:57 +0000

I found this book to have depths of story telling, technique, meaning, a showing not telling–letting the reader slowly come to dawning realizations, sometimes to devastating effect. This is the kind of book that makes me sit back and wonder, ‘just how does a true writer’s imagination work to come up something fresh yet in conversation with a rich tapestry of artists from the past. The concept of collateral damage here is profoundly explored. Yes, this book should win, but not by ‘defeating’ the others by some measures of fiction writers, but because it really is quite good, timely, and Iraqi and American novel…the subplot of the narrator’s slowly developing romantic relationship with an African American woman, meeting her mother, eating great food during the dinner she has cooked and serves, I’d think that instead of the narrator being a fish out of water in both his homeland and adopted country, instead the narrator embodies being an Iraqi and an American in some important, complex ways. Oh, back to the review: the narrator at book’s opening is finishing his Ph d at Harvard in Arabic. He moves to teach at Dartmouth.

Comments on: “The Book of Collateral Damage” by Sinan Antoon [Why This Book Should Win]

By: Grant Barber