Sinan Antoon


Sinan Antoon is an Iraqi poet, novelist, scholar, and literary translator. He has been described as "one of the most acclaimed authors of the Arab world." Alberto Manguel described him as "one of the great fiction writers of our time.” He is an associate professor at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.

Life and career

Antoon was born in 1967 in Baghdad. He received his B.A. in English with distinction from the University of Baghdad in 1990 with minors in Arabic and Translation. He left Iraq in 1991 after the onset of the Gulf War and moved to the United States. He completed an M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University in 1995. In 2006, he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Arabic and Islamic Studies. His doctoral dissertation was the first study on the 10th century poet, Ibn al-Hajjaj and the genre of poetry he pioneered.
"He was one of a coterie of dissident diasporic Iraqi intellectuals who opposed the 2003 US occupation of his homeland that led to the current post-colonial quagmire." Antoon was featured in the 2003 documentary film About Baghdad, which he also co-directed and co-produced.
His articles have appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, and in pan-Arab dailies including al-Hayat, al-Akhbar, as-Safir, and al-Quds al-Arabi where he writes a biweekly opinion column.
His poems and novels have been translated into thirteen different languages. He is also a co-founder and co-editor of the e-zine Jadaliyya.

Literary works

Poetry

Antoon has published two collections of poetry in Arabic: Laylun Wahidun fi Kull al-Mudun and Kama fi al-Sama. He has published two collections in English;The Baghdad Blues and .

Novels

Antoon has published five novels:
  • was widely acclaimed in the Arab world and described as "the Iraqi novel par excellence." It was translated to English by Rebecca Johnson and the author as I`jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody and published by CityLights Books in 2006. Other translations include German, Norwegian, Italian, and Portuguese.
  • was translated by the author and published by Yale University Press in 2013 as The Corpse Washer and was longlisted for the Independent Prize for Foreign Fiction. It won the 2014 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Literary Translation. The Argentinian writer Alberto Manguel described as "one of the most extraordinary novels he's read in a long time." The translation was published by Actes Sud in 2017 and won the 2017 Prix de la Littérature Arabe for the best Arabic novel translated to French in 2017. Its translation in Malayalam language in the title was done by Dr. Shamnad N, Head of the department, University College, Trivandrum, Kerala.
  • was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and was translated to Spanish by María Luz Comendador and published by Turner Libros in May 2014 under the title Fragmentos de Bagdad. The English translation was published in 2017 as The Baghdad Eucharist by Hoopoe Books.
  • . Was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. It was translated by Jonathan Wright into English and published by Yale University Press in 2020 as '.
  • ' . A novel about two Iraqi refugees living in the United States. One fled dictatorship in the 1990s and the other fled the post-2003 sectarian ethnic cleansing. It was translated to Persian by Mohammad Hazbae Zadeh and published by . It was also translated into French and published by Actes Sud.

    Honors and awards

  • 2017 for "Seul le Grenadier" .
  • 2017 "Fihris" longlisted for the .
  • 2016/2017: Fellow at the .
  • 2014: for his translation of his own novel The Corpse Washer
  • 2014: Arab American Book Award for The Corpse Washer
  • 2014: .
  • 2013:Ya Maryam shortlisted for the 2013 International Prize of Arabic Fiction
  • 2013: Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin
  • 2012: National Translation Award for his translation of Mahmoud Darwish's In the Presence of Absence from the American Literary Translators Association
  • 2008: Postdoctoral Fellowship: , Berlin, Germany.
  • 2002: for Dissertation Research in Original Sources.

    Works

Books
  • . Harvard University Press. 2006.
  • The Baghdad Blues. Harbor Mountain Press. 2007..
  • Ya Maryam. Dar al-Jamal. 2012.
  • '. Oxford University Press. 2017..
  • '. Yale University Press. 28 May 2019..
Film
  • ''About Baghdad''