Return to Ruin

Name: Return to Ruin
Author: Zainab Saleh

Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia

Zainab Saleh,

280 pages
English
ePUB (mobile friendly)
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - ePub

Available until 11 Dec |Learn more

Return to Ruin

Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia

Zainab Saleh,

About this book

This volume of exiles' accounts "[uses] the stories as springboards to discussing Iraqi history, politicization, and diasporic experiences in depth" ( International Journal of Middle East Studies).

With the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iraqis abroad, hoping to return one day to a better Iraq, became uncertain exiles. Return to Ruin tells the human story of this exile in the context of decades of U.S. imperial interests in Iraq—from the U.S. backing of the 1963 Ba'th coup and support of Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1980s, to the 1991 Gulf War and 2003 invasion and occupation.

Zainab Saleh shares the experiences of Iraqis she met over fourteen years of fieldwork in Iraqi London—offering stories from an aging communist nostalgic for the streets she marched since childhood, a devout Shi'i dreaming of holy cities and family graves, and newly uprooted immigrants with fresh memories of loss, as well as her own. Focusing on debates among Iraqi exiles about what it means to be an Iraqi after years of displacement, Saleh weaves a narrative that draws attention to a once-dominant, vibrant Iraqi cultural landscape and social and political shifts among the diaspora after decades of authoritarianism, war, and occupation in Iraq. Through it all, this book illuminates how Iraqis continue to fashion a sense of belonging and imagine a future, built on the shards of these shattered memories.

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Yes, you can access Return to Ruin by Zainab Saleh in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Social Science Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.