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Monday, March 29, 2010

The Last of the Angels

The novel is set in Kirkuk during the 1950's and is a humorous story of three very different people - Hameed Nylon, Khidir Musafrom, and Burhan Abdullah - all from the same neighborhood in Kirkuk.  Using humor and the supernatural, the author shows us the mix of people - Turkmen, Kurds, Arabs, Jews, and Assyrian Christians - that all made up Kirkuk in the 50s.  The author states, "I'd like my readers first of all to read this novel as a literary work.  The Last of the Angels is a journey inside Arabic and Islamic culture, mythology, and religion not only as it exists in Iraq, but also in the entire Middle East."
Don't expect this novel to stay humorous because at the end all the characters reveal the dangerous world in which they live.

The author of this book, Fadhil al-Azzawi was born in Kirkuk, Iraq, in 1940.  He has a PhD in Cultural Journalism and has written several books and poetry collections.  At present he resides in Germany.

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