Papa Sartre

Description

Eccentric men and women: cultured prostitutes, revolutionary philosophers, charlatan politicians, adventurers, and soldiers, shaping the cultural and political life of Rashid Street in Baghdad, with its cafes, nightclubs, bars, basements, and hotels. A novel that satirizes the generation of the 1960s in Iraq. Hanna Youssef with his peculiar features and his promiscuous girlfriend, Nono Bahar; Abdul Rahman, the Iraqi philosopher, a lover of existentialism and a disciple of Jean-Paul Sartre; Dalal Masabni, the dancer whose life was swept along by the political and ideological shifts in Baghdad; Ismail Hadoub, the lowly and opportunistic one who flitted from communism to existentialism; Shaul, the Jewish communist who wanted to establish a kingdom of happiness on earth; Edmond, the Trotskyist who wanted to create a revolution and destroy everything; and Nadia Khadduri, the beautiful one who became a victim of the amateurs of ideas and cultural fads. This is Baghdad of the 1960s, with its opulent streets and stark contrasts between impoverished alleyways and aristocratic homes: Muslim, Christian, and Jewish families living against a backdrop of existentialist, communist, and nationalist ideologies, clashing over class, ethnic, and political conflicts, and enduring crushing political upheavals and bloody revolutions.