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A Novel
by Sinan Antoon
In this achingly beautiful novel of trauma, memory, and identity, two Iraqi men struggle to start a new life in the US after the Gulf War.
Sami, a retired doctor, lives with his son and grandchildren in Brooklyn. As he tries to navigate this new city, it becomes increasingly clear he is losing his memory due to dementia. Every day he sinks deeper into old memories of a life in Iraq before the war.
Omar arrived in the US with no family. He has run away from Iraq with a fake identity. As a deserter, he was punished by having an ear cut off. In Baghdad, this is an unmissable mark of shame. Omar works menial jobs, creates a new identity—comically passing as Puerto Rican—and dreams of reconstructive surgery to get his ear, and his dignity, back.
Their stories converge powerfully when it becomes clear they were connected in Iraq at a moment that was pivotal for them both. Deftly exploring the aftermath of war and relocation, Of Loss and Lavender creates a moving portrait of life in exile.
"From one of Iraq's finest writers, a tender, audacious novel that traces the long afterlife of war and the quiet, reparative power of listening." —Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, author of Call Me Zebra and Savage Tongues
"Of Loss and Lavender is a haunting story of two men—one desperate to remember, the other to forget. In exploring the cost of erasing one's past, Antoon reveals the deep fractures of exile and identity. Moving between Iraq and the United States—two worlds bound by history since 2003—this novel marks a bold new chapter in Antoon's work. With his gift for creating unforgettable, layered characters, Antoon leaves readers with echoes that linger long after the final page." —Hassan Abdulrazzak, British-Iraqi playwright and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
"Sinan Antoon's Of Loss and Lavender is an unexpectedly soulful novel that deepens the more you stay with it. The book's two protagonists are traumatized, walled-off, and imperfect men, but one of Antoon's victories is how he makes us want to spend time with them, understand them, and even root them on. If most novels close down as you finish them, this one never stops opening up. Of Loss and Lavender expands into the past of trauma and the possible future of love, between nations, languages, and into the hidden conflicts inside a diaspora. One can think of few other novels that depict the disorientation, buried pasts, and surrealism of migration into an America seen as it truly is." —Ken Chen, author of Juvenilia
This information about Of Loss and Lavender was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sinan Antoon is an Iraqi poet, novelist, translator, and scholar. His essays and op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Journal of World Literature, and Jadaliyya. His translation of Mahmoud Darwish's In the Presence of Absence won the 2012 American Literary Translators Association Award and that of Ibtisam Azem's The Book of Disappearance was long-listed for the 2025 International Booker Prize. His novels include I`jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody, The Corpse Washer, The Baghdad Eucharist, and The Book of Collateral Damage. He is associate professor at New York University.
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