ARB 3102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: French Literature, Jeux, Denis Villeneuve
Document Summary
Born in baghdad to an arab jewish family, kattan studied law at the sorbonne in. He lives in montreal and writes in french. His most famous book, farwell babylon, was published in 1975. It is a fictionalized memoires written in french about his early years in iraq before the immigration wave that forced many jewish iraqis to flee the country in 1954. Kattan wrote novels, short stories, essays and theatre. In this beautifully written memoir, a young boy comes of age and describes his discoveries of work, literature, patriotism, the joys of lazy sundays swimming in the. He also talks eloquently of his greatest discovery: women and love. This is a story of roots and exile, of thirst for life and life"s experiences. However, more than that it is a tribute to a lost world, an ancient eastern city in which iraq"s kurds, bedouins, sunnis, Shiites, chaldeans, catholics, and jews all lived together in a rough, rewarding sort of harmony.