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A Novel
by Feurat Alani
In this poignant first novel of memory, identity, and generational trauma, a child of political refugees tries to uncover the past his dying father kept secret, painting a powerful, layered portrait of Iraq from the 1950s to the 2000s.
As a young man in the early 1970s, Rami fled his home to escape Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. In France, he built a new life and had a family, working hard to become a successful immigrant. He barely speaks of his time over there, and his son, Euphrates, feels it like a wall between them. When the now elderly Rami is hospitalized with a fatal cancer, Euphrates sees his last chance to learn more about this enigmatic man, and himself.
Shifting between past and present, I Remember Fallujah brings to vivid life Rami's coming-of-age in a land devastated by violent conflict. His memories of the city, which became a stronghold for Hussein's Ba'ath Party, reveal the courageous acts of resistance, as well as complex loyalties, of left-wing Iraqis fighting against a brutal Arab nationalist movement. And where Rami's amnesia has erased his exile, Euphrates seeks to fill in the gaps, with memories of his childhood in Paris, and visits to a changed Iraq that will unearth key facts.
Inspired by Feurat Alani's own history, this unforgettable first novel is a moving tribute to the love between father and son that explores the nuances of the immigrant dream, and how we live with the family and country into which we were born.
"Poignant and devastating, I Remember Fallujah is a novel about how the vagaries of memory support the weight of secrets too painful to speak out loud." —Foreword Reviews
"Brilliant...A son's tribute to his father, a beautiful act of recognition." —Le Figaro Littéraire
"In his poignant first novel, reporter Feurat Alani examines his Iraqi roots and the complexity of filiation." —Livres Hebdo
"Feurat Alani's debut novel is a lyrical journey of remembering, a son's voyage to salvage fading memories of an amnesiac father and piece together a past too personal and precious to be lost to oblivion. As the protagonist, Euphrates, rediscovers a father and a fatherland, he has to reconcile the personal history with the objective truth. Feurat Alani's Iraq is not just a country; it becomes any place you and I have been expelled from, a home you and I yearn to return to." —Ali Araghi, author of The Immortals of Tehran
"A profoundly moving novel about the scars and cruelties of history, an unforgettable portrait of Iraq, and a deeply humane story of fathers and sons. I was struck by every page." —Ayşegül Savaş, author of Walking on the Ceiling and White on White
This information about I Remember Fallujah was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Feurat Alani is a French journalist and documentary filmmaker who has spent more than seventeen years reporting across the Middle East. He is the author of two graphic novels, The Flavors of Iraq, which won the Prix Albert-Londres, France's highest journalism prize, in 2019; and Falloujah, ma campagne perdue (Fallujah, my lost campaign). His work has appeared in a variety of international outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Le Monde Diplomatique, France 24, Mediapart, Al Jazeera, Arte, Canal Plus, and Radio Canada. His debut novel, I Remember Fallujah, received the Arab Literature Prize and the Senghor First Novel Prize, and was a finalist for the Goncourt First Novel Prize.
Adriana Hunter studied French and Drama at the University of London. She has translated more than ninety books, including Marc Petitjean's The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris and Hervé Le Tellier's The Anomaly and Eléctrico W, winner of the French-American Foundation's 2013 Translation Prize in Fiction. She lives in Kent, England.
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