Oh Mary

Author's name: Sinan Antonadar Publisher: Al-Jamal Publications for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2012 Literary classification: Novel Brief about the book: The Iraqi novelist and poet Sinan Antonadar in his third novel addresses the thorny questions faced by minorities in current Iraq, narrating through the biography of Youssef - (who refuses to migrate and leave the house he built) - as well as through the biography of Maha - (who found herself a migrant within her own country and is waiting for her papers to leave Iraq permanently) - some of the pains of the Iraqi people, and what it raises in terms of questions about the past and present, that is, between memory and the present. Contradictory visions of two characters from an Iraqi Christian family, brought together by the country's circumstances under one roof in Baghdad. Youssef, a lonely man in old age, refuses to leave the house he built and lived in for half a century before migrating. He remains clinging to threads of hope and memories of a happy past alive in his mind. Maha, a young woman whose life was torn apart by sectarian violence, which displaced her family and separated her from them, living as a refugee in her own country and as a resident in Youssef's house. She waits with her husband for the migration date from a homeland she feels does not want her. The events of the novel take place in one day, where individual and collective memory narratives intersect with reality. Hope clashes with fate when an event changes the lives of the two characters forever. The novel raises bold and difficult questions about the situation of minorities in Iraq, as one character searches for a lost Iraq, while the other tries to escape from the Iraq of today.