L'archivio dei danni collaterali

Namir, a young Iraqi scholar who earned his doctorate from Harvard, is hired by a group of filmmakers to document the devastation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During an excursion to Baghdad, Namir ventures onto al-Mutanabbi Street—famous for its bookstores—where he meets Wadud, an eccentric bookseller attempting to catalog everything destroyed by the war: from objects, buildings, books, and manuscripts to flora, fauna, and human beings. Namir becomes obsessed with Wadud’s archive and, reflecting on his own life in New York, discovers how deeply it is intertwined with the fragments of his homeland's past and present. Almost a "landscape exercise," stylistically ambitious, set amidst the wreckage of war and the power of memory.

Author: Sinan Antoon (سِنَان أَنطُون)

He was born and raised in Baghdad, is a poet, novelist, translator, and academic. He earned a doctorate in Arabic Literature in the United States in 2006. His poems and essays have appeared in various journals in both English and Arabic. Among his published novels is Wahdaha Shajarat al-Rumman ("The Corpse Washer," or literally "The Pomegranate Tree Alone") from 2010, which won the Best Arab Book Award in 2014. He is currently an associate professor at New York University's Gallatin School and the co-founder and co-editor of the journal Jadaliyya.