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Mahmoud Saeed

Born: 1939 in Mosul, Iraq
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Saeed currently teaches intermediate and advanced Arabic language courses at DePaul University, as well as Arab Culture and Iraqi Political history.

Biography: Saeed has written more than twenty novels and short story collections, and hundreds of articles.While he writes all maunscripts in Arabic, three of his most dynamic novels and memoirs have been translated into English along with several short stories.In 1963 he was imprisoned on political charges for a year, to be followed by three years of suspension from employment. The detentions continued until his sixth and final incarceration in 1980. In 1985 Saeed emigrated to the United Arab Emirates, and since 1999 he has been a political refugee in the USA.


Awards:

Primary Literary Genre(s): Fiction; Non-Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Email: mahmoud@mahmoudsaeed.com
Mahmoud Saeed on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=mahmoud++saeed+


Selected Titles

Saddam City /
ISBN: 0863563503 OCLC: 56366688

Saqi, London : 2004.

"One morning Mustafa Ali Norman, a teacher in Baghdad, is arrested as he reaches the school gates. For the next fifteen months he witnesses harrowing scenes of torture as he himself is brutally interrogated, shuttled from prison to prison and barred from contacting his family. The question of his guilt or innocence clearly irrelevant, Mustafa must fight to retain a grip on reality: 'How do I know that I am not dreaming this?' he asks."--Jacket.

  The world through the eyes of angels
ISBN: 9789774165566 OCLC: 822993471

  The world through the eyes of angels /
ISBN: 0815609914 OCLC: 785782963

Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, N.Y. : 2011.

Mosul, Iraq, in the 1940s is a teeming, multiethnic city where Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Jews, Aramaeans, Turkmens, Yazidis, and Syriacs mingle in the ancient souks and alleyways. In these crowded streets, among rich and poor, educated and illiterate, pious and unbelieving, a boy is growing up. Burdened with chores from an early age, and afflicted with an older brother who persecutes him with mindless sadism, the child finds happiness only in stolen moments with his beloved older sister and with friends in the streets. Closest to his heart are three girls, encountered by chance: a Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew. After enriching the boy's life immensely, all three meet tragic fates, leaving a wound in his heart that will not heal. A richly textured portrayal of Iraqi society before the upheavals of the late twentieth century, Saeed's novel depicts a sensitive and loving child assailed by the cruelty of life. Sometimes defeated but never surrendering, he is sustained by his city and its people.

 

 

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