I Remember Fallujah

Feurat Alani is a French journalist and documentary filmmaker who has spent more than seventeen years reporting across the Middle East. He is the author of two graphic novels, The Flavors of Iraq, which won the Prix Albert-Londres, France’s highest journalism prize, in 2019; and Falloujah, ma campagne perdue (Fallujah, my lost campaign). His work has appeared in a variety of international outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Le Monde Diplomatique, France 24, Mediapart, Al Jazeera, Arte, Canal Plus, and Radio Canada. His debut novel, I Remember Fallujah, received France’s prestigious Femina Prize. He lives in Dubai.Adriana Hunter studied French and Drama at the University of London. She has translated more than ninety books, including Marc Petitjean’s The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris and Hervé Le Tellier’s The Anomaly and Eléctrico W, winner of the French-American Foundation’s 2013 Translation Prize in Fiction. She lives in Kent, England.

"In this poignant first novel of memory, identity, and generational trauma, a child of political refugees tries to uncover the past his dying father kept secret, painting a powerful, layered portrait of Iraq from the 1950s to the 2000s. At the beginning of the 1970s, the young Rami decided to flee the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. A political refugee in France, he is a taciturn man, evasive about his past. At the end of his life, hospitalized for cancer treatment, Rami suddenly suffers from amnesia. His memories seem to have stopped somewhere between Iraq and France. "I remember Fallujah," he says to his son, Euphrates, who sees it as an opportunity to finally discover his father's story. But then there's nothing. Rami has forgotten the second part of his life: that of exile. Euphrates will then tell what he knows, with the hope of unlocking long-held secrets. A quest that will plunge him into a tumultuous family odyssey, from Paris to Fallujah. A moving tribute to the love between father and son that bridges time and space, this unforgettable first novel explores the complexities of the immigrant dream, and how we live with the family and country into which we were born"