The Book of Collateral Damage

“An Iraqi scholar finds his New York life interconnected with his homeland’s past and present when he encounters an eccentric bookseller in Baghdad.”—Tammy Tarng, New York Times Book Review (“Summer Reading” issue)

“One of the most acclaimed authors of the Arab world.”—al-Ahram Weekly

“Formally daring, stylistically inventive, this is Antoon’s most complex work to date. It challenges but it also impresses and enthrals.” —Malcolm Forbes, The National

“Reads extraordinarily smoothly. . . . Well presented, and effective in portraying the devastating cost of war and all that is lost in it.”—M. A. Orthofer, Complete Review

“Autofiction, by definition, centers around questions of the self. . . . But The Book of Collateral Damage pushes the form one step further . . . to interrogate the loss of self.”—Will Preston, Full Stop

“The author reclaims his own narrative of what happened to his home country and navigates the cultural politics of his hybrid identity as an Iraqi American intellectual. However, in addition to the acute human attention to details, the novel moves beyond cultural and identity politics to a posthuman view . . . giving agency to things and places that the war consumes.”—Ghyath Manhel, World Literature Today

“A provocative novel.”—Spencer Dew, Religious Studies Review

“The gifted novelist and poet Sinan Antoon . . . fills his pictorial prose with life-affirming energy surrounded by destruction. . . . Truly a literary feat, The Book of Collateral Damage pays tribute to Iraqis on a multitude of levels while telling a complex story of immigration.”—Lynne Rogers, Al Jadid

Long listed for the 2020 Best Translated Book Award, sponsored by Three Percent

“Sinan Antoon is one of the great fiction writers of our time.”—Alberto Manguel, author of Library at Night

“Sinan Antoon is a master storyteller and The Book of Collateral Damage reaffirms his place amongst some of our very best writers. Vividly imagined and sensitively told, this is a tale of one man’s exile and return, and all the distances traveled to find a semblance of home.”—Maaza Mengiste, author of Beneath the Lion's Gaze

“Mixing the past and the present of Arabic literature, Sinan Antoon leads a hallucinatory investigation into the territories of memory and tragedies of Iraq. A deep reflection on exile and the power of books.”—Mathias Enard, author of Compass