Wadi al-firashat

Azhar Jirjis

Language: Arabic
1. Edition
paperback, pages
ISBN 9789922721545
Availability: next-day delivery
19.90 € 

riwaya. Longlist International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

The Valley of the Butterflies is a novel which blends fantasy and reality, tragedy and comedy. Set in Baghdad between 1999 and 2024, it tells the story of Aziz Awad, a government archivist who loses his job and struggles to keep his small family alive. In the face of few prospects, he finds himself working as a driver, delivering bodies to a cemetery for foundlings and outcasts, where the souls of the buried metamorphose into luminous butterflies. One night, Aziz meets the cemetery’s builder, the dervish known as Badri al-Naqqash, and learns more about the cemetery and its burial rituals, and his life turns upside down.