When the Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad

by Mona Yahia

Overview

In Baghdad , Lina is trying to lead a normal life, but politi keep intruding. Violent government coups are almost annual events and it's difficult for a child to understand what's going on or who to believe. The need for secrecy means Lina cannot tell her best friend that they are just waiting for the right moment to flee. It is the 1960s and Lina is part of the dwindling Jewish community… Mona Yahia was born in Baghdad in 1954 and escaped with her family to Israel in 1970. In 1985 she moved to Germany to study fine arts and has remained there ever since. Winner of the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize for Fiction 2001 'Yahia rolls Baghdad around her tongue, savouring its suks, smells, and sweetmeats (reading her makes one hungry). This is a truly exotic novel, but it's also a coming-of-age work in which the almost imperceptible transformation from childhood to adolescence is saltily observed and never sentimentalised. Yahia's prose courses with insight and wit. Her deftness of touch means that, despite its subject-matter, this novel never becomes a bleak tale of religious persecution, but remains a fresh story about adolescent experience in adversity - with parallels in the most unlikely places.' Anne Karpf, The Guardian 'The novel powerfully conveys the author's outrage, as well as her nostalgia for her native land.' The Times 'Yahia's writing evokes both the sensuality of domestic intimacy…alongside the horror of public hangings…When the Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad is most politically sophisticated, and also most poignant, when it explores questions of language and identity.' Alev Adil, Times Literary Supplement

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781905559336
Publisher:	Halban
Publication date:	10/10/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
File size:	508 KB

About the Author

Mona Yahia was born in Baghdad in 1954, and escaped with her family to Israel in 1970. She studied Psychology at Tel Aviv University and worked as a trainer in the School for Army Commanders. In 1985, she moved to Germany to study fine arts. This is her first novel, and has been published in Great Britain, Germany, and France.

Editorial Reviews

Born in Baghdad in 1954 and a refugee to Israel with her family in 1970, Yahia makes her impressive debut with this sharp recollection of the virulently anti-Semitic Iraq of the l960s through the eyes of a teenaged Jewish girl. Thirteen-year-old Lina identifies herself as Iraqi first, albeit a member of a minority, and is more curious than fearful about the word "persecution," often whispered in the Jewish community in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War. The definitions she learns won't be subtle: her older brother, Shaul, will be imprisoned for drawing a Star of David on a chalkboard; her father will lose his accounting job; and her swimming teacher and a schoolmate will be tortured and publicly executed on trumped-up charges by the new Baath regime. The only hope of evading the security police, who often drive gray Volkswagen Beetles, is to make the dangerous flight through Iran. As Lina's family gradually plans their escape, she experiences the whims and pangs of growing up, a first love, sibling rivalry. The novel's beginning feels choppy as the narrative jumps from scene to scene of Lina's early childhood, but the vividly realized detours enrich the reader's understanding of Lina's suffering at her country's betrayal. (Apr.)

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Publishers Weekly

Yahia's debut novel transports the reader to life in the Sixties in the Baghdad Jewish community, where Jews had lived peacefully for 2500 years. Preteen Lina narrates a coming-of-age story close to the author's own experience. The sights, sounds, and smells of everyday life in a wealthy society where Jews made up a quarter of the population are palpable and visceral. In hot weather, Lina sleeps on the roof with her brother and examines the stars, swims at the sports center with her friends, and has family dinners and parties with Arab guests. Political unrest upends the peace and quietude that Lina has tried to maintain, and gray Beetles (Volkswagen "bugs," or police vehicles) start patrolling Jewish neighborhoods. Arrests, executions, and hatred of Zionists become part of life after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Lina and her family leave (long after the 100,000 Jews who initially left Baghdad for Israel) and make a perilous escape through the mountains, across Iran, and finally to the Promised Land. A charming window into a life in Baghdad that unfortunately has been closed forever; recommended for all libraries.
—Molly Abramowitz

Library Journal