A Sky So Close

This child's eye view - and then young woman's eye view - of the world reveals much about the narrator. Curiously, although we absorb the narrator's passions in detail, we never learn her name. Her early childhood, in a bicultural and hopelessly disfunctional family, is set in a rural area of Iraq. Much of the narration is addressed to the father, with whom the small child has a warm relationship. How the child makes her way through difficulties of her family life, as well as comes to grips with the life/death cycles of human existence around her, gives this novel great power. This same tension - a difficult family life and even more difficult world situation - recurs in the second section of the book, set in England. The young woman struggles through a relationship with her mother, who must deal with widowhood and a grueling fight with cancer. Thrown into the mix are blighted love affairs, the Iran Iraq War, the First Gulf War and sanctions against Iraq. Horrors of the war are contrasted to sugary military communiques claiming the Iraqi forces are "succeeding." How the child/woman observes and handles battles within and without is truly remarkable. I found the writing sensitive, evocative and refreshingly frank. An unusual and beautifully written novel.

This story of a girl growing up in wartime Iraq sparked controversy when it was published in the Middle East: now English readers have a chance to experience Betool Khedairi's A Sky So Close, a coming of age story of an Iraqi childhood. The result is a series of insights on contemporary Iraq which no history coverage could hope to match for depth.