Research Catalog

Title

Cell block five / Fadhil al-Azzawi ; translated by William M. Hutchins.

Author

ʻAzzāwī, Fāḍil

Publication

Cairo ; New York : American University in Cairo Press, 2008.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Hutchins, William M.

Description

108 p.; 21 cm.

Summary

"Being plucked from a Baghdad cafe and deposited in a cell block for political prisoners is a wakeup call for Aziz, the novel's hero and narrator, a young man who has been living on automatic pilot - as if he were a guest visiting his own life - until he is abruptly forced to come to terms with the flawed world we inhabit and shape. Although never charged with any offense, he must adjust to a lengthy stay in prison, where he is befriended by imprisoned revolutionaries who teach him to dream that an ideal city with his name on it may lie just over the horizon, while the police supervisor encourages him to think of a simple crime to which he can confess so he can be charged and eventually released." "Based on the author's own incarceration in Iraq, Cell Block Five is a clear-headed, good-humored tribute to the prison's men - both the inmates and the guards - and an indictment of man's gratuitous inhumanity to man, pointing out that the transition from abused to abuser, tortured to torturer, can be an easy one."--Jacket

Series Statement

Modern Arabic literature

Uniform Title

• Qalʻah al-khāmisah. English
• Modern Arabic literature

Alternative Title

• Qalʻah al-khāmisah.
• Cell block 5

Subject

Prisons > Iraq > Fiction

Genre/Form

• Fictional Work
• Fiction
• Romans.

Note

• Novel.
• "Dar el Kutub no. 20183/07"--T.p. verso

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

ISBN

• 9789774161421
• 9774161424

OCLC

• 181138729
• SCSB-12441333

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library