Sinan Antoon, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Arabic Literature
New York University
Born in 1967 in Baghdad
Studied English at Baghdad University; Arab Studies at Georgetown University, Washington, DC; and Arabic and Islamic Studies at Harvard University
Project
Writing a Novel
I will be working on my fifth novel (still untitled). It traces the intertwined lives of two Iraqi refugees from different generations now living in New York. Both are victims of state and sectarian violence that still haunts their daily lives. One is at pains to erase the past and to assimilate. The other, an old man suffering from dementia, tries to reconstruct his past. Their two voices alternate in narrating.A second project involves finishing a monograph on the Iraqi poet Sargon Boulus (1944-2007).
Recommended Reading
Antoon, Sinan. The Corpse Washer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.
-. The Poetics of the Obscene in Premodern Arabic Poetry: Ibn al-Hajjaj and Sukhf. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
-. I'jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody. San Francisco: City Lights, 2007 (Deutsch: Irakische Rhapsodie. Basel: Lenos, 2009).
Publications from the Fellows' Library
Antoon, Sinan (New Haven, 2019)
The book of collateral damage Fihris
Antoon, Sinan (Boston, 2018)
Difficult variations : Saadi Youssef’s impossible returns
Antoon, Sinan (Berlin, 2018)
Antoon, Sinan (Leiden, 2017)
Sargon Boulus and Tu Fu’s Ghost(s)
Antoon, Sinan (Cairo, 2017)
Baghdad eucharist : a novel Ya maryam
Antoon, Sinan (2015)
Antoon, Sinan (2014)
Ibn al-H̥ajjāj and sukhf : genealogies
Antoon, Sinan (New York, NY, 2014)
The poetics of the obscene in premodern Arabic poetry : Ibn al-Ḥajjāj and sukhf Literatures and cultures of the Islamic world
Antoon, Sinan (New Haven, 2013)
The corpse washer A Margellos World Republic of Letters book
Antoon, Sinan (Madrid, 2013)
