A powerful and sweeping novel set over two tumultuous decades in Iraq
from the National Book Award-nominated author of The Beekeeper.
Shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
Helen is a young Yazidi woman, living with her family in a mountain
village in Sinjar, northern Iraq. One day she finds a local bird caught
in a trap, and frees it, just as the trapper, Elias, returns. At first
angry, he soon sees the error of his ways and vows never to keep a bird
captive again.
Helen and Elias fall deeply in love, marry and start a family in Sinjar.
The village has seemed to stand apart from time, protected by the
mountains and too small to attract much political notice. But their
happy existence is suddenly shattered when Elias, a journalist, goes
missing. A brutal organization is sweeping over the land, infiltrating
even the remotest corners, its members cloaking their violence in
religious devotion. Helen's search for her husband results in her own
captivity and enslavement.
She eventually escapes her captors and is reunited with some of her
family. But her life is forever changed. Elias remains missing and her
sons, now young recruits to the organization, are like strangers. Will
she find harmony and happiness again?
For readers of Elif Shafak, Samar Yazbek's Planet of Clay, or Ahmed
Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad, Dunya Mikhail's The Bird Tattoo
chronicles a world of great upheaval, love and loss, beauty and horror,
and will stay in readers' minds long after the last page.
