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Home and Identity
Baghdad & Exile with Eli Amir
IC024
| THU |
| 17 |
| JUN |
Thursday 17 June, 8.00pm
£8
The anguish of losing your homeland... A masterpiece of story telling.
A unique opportunity to hear remarkable author Eli Amir talk about his life and experiences in exile, which inspired his acclaimed novel The Dove Flyer.
When his Uncle Hizkel is arrested, Kabi and his family face an uncertain future as do all Jews living in Baghdad. It is 1950 and each member of Kabi’s circle has a different dream: his mother wants to return to the Moslem quarter where she felt safer; his father wants to emigrate to Israel and grow rice there; Salim, his headmaster, wants Arabs and Jews to be equal, and Abu Edouard just wants to care for his beloved doves.
Eli Amir was born in Baghdad in 1937. At the age of 13, he went into exile along with 120,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel. He went on to serve the Israeli government as a ministerial adviser on Arab affairs and immigrant absorption. He is active in The Abraham Fund for coexistence and equality between Israeli Arabs and Jews.
Above all, though, he is a literary celebrity, well known in Israel for his novels about Iraqi-Jewish experience. His books are part of the national curriculum. He is also gaining recognition in the Arab world, especially in Egypt. No other writer has explored the Iraqi Jewish experience of exile in this depth before. "If you believe in the Other, you send out your dream of peace on the wing of a dove," he says.
A unique opportunity to hear remarkable author Eli Amir talk about his life and experiences in exile, which inspired his acclaimed novel The Dove Flyer.
When his Uncle Hizkel is arrested, Kabi and his family face an uncertain future as do all Jews living in Baghdad. It is 1950 and each member of Kabi’s circle has a different dream: his mother wants to return to the Moslem quarter where she felt safer; his father wants to emigrate to Israel and grow rice there; Salim, his headmaster, wants Arabs and Jews to be equal, and Abu Edouard just wants to care for his beloved doves.
Eli Amir was born in Baghdad in 1937. At the age of 13, he went into exile along with 120,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel. He went on to serve the Israeli government as a ministerial adviser on Arab affairs and immigrant absorption. He is active in The Abraham Fund for coexistence and equality between Israeli Arabs and Jews.
Above all, though, he is a literary celebrity, well known in Israel for his novels about Iraqi-Jewish experience. His books are part of the national curriculum. He is also gaining recognition in the Arab world, especially in Egypt. No other writer has explored the Iraqi Jewish experience of exile in this depth before. "If you believe in the Other, you send out your dream of peace on the wing of a dove," he says.