POSTING FOR A FRIEND: Mira Rocca [roccam...@gmail.com]-please contact Mira Rocca with any questions.
Memories of Eden: A Journey Through Jewish Baghdad was originally published in London in 2008. It has now been republished by Northwestern University Press for the US market - ISBN 0-8101-2634-6 / $27.95. Toll free number 1-800-621-2736. http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/Title/tabid/68/ISBN/0-8101-2634-6/Default.aspx The London Review of Books called it "as sumptuous an account of the world of the Baghdadi Jewish elite as we're likely to get." Writer and boradcaster William Shawcross praised it as "an astonishing record". Britain's Guardian newspaper called it "a book not so much about politics and history as about vanished pleasure." http://www.memoriesofeden.com Try to imagine a world with no running water or electricity, searing heat and the constant fear of cholera. Imagine a city that is nothing more than a warren of alleys the width of a cart, where cows are being milked on doorsteps and street barbers are giving shaves, pulling teeth and lancing boils. Barefoot watersellers bend double under their bulging goatskins. It is 1912 and the city is Baghdad. To us it sounds like hell. Yet Violette Shamash, born into an affluent family, adored its upside: sleeping under the stars, the call of the nightingale, scents of gardenias and spices, riding to school on donkeyback. For her it was a kind of Eden. Violette was a privileged witness to a time when nearly 40 per cent of Baghdad was Jewish and Jews, Moslems and Christians embraced each other's differences. Her insights into domestic life, and a society coming to terms with the 20th century, are contained in a new book that her daughter and son-in-law edited from reminiscences she sent them over a period of 20 years. They are candid, entertaining, and often downright funny until we get to 1941 when disaster struck. A brutal massacre shattered Violette's world and sounded the death-knell for the Jews of Babylon, the oldest community in the Diaspora --- Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: hasaf...@osu.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
