The Corpse Washer - (Margellos World Republic of Letters) by Sinan Antoon (Paperback)

The Corpse Washer is a powerful and moving novel that explores the heart of Iraq's complex and violent recent history through the struggles of a single desperate family in Baghdad.

The book follows the story of Jawad, a young man who decides to abandon his family's tradition of corpse washing and shrouding, choosing instead to become a sculptor and celebrate life.

However, the circumstances of history dictate otherwise, and Jawad finds himself returning to the inevitable washing and shrouding of corpses as the violence in Iraq intensifies.

Through this novel, Antoon limns a world of great sorrows, a world where the winds wail, and the borders between life and death are blurred.

The Corpse Washer is a compact masterpiece that offers a moving literary elegy for the numberless Iraqi dead and those who remain to bury them.

It is a necessary counterpoint to American stories focused exclusively on the suffering and trauma of Iraq's occupiers, and it must be read.