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Samuel Shimon Iraq    PWF 2015

“Peddler, traveler, militant, refugee”―Samuel Shimon―one of the most exciting writers in the Arab world―was born into an Assyrian family in 1956 in Al-Habbaniyah, Iraq. In 1979, he left for Hollywood to become a film-maker―getting as far as Damascus, Amman, Beirut, Nicosia, Cairo and Tunis―where he was often homeless and tortured.

“Let me tell you something―and I hope you do not think I am crazy―but when they were beating me up, I was thinking about torture scenes I had seen in American movies. I would imagine the camera in a certain position, and I would turn my face toward that imaginary camera to show the audience the blood coming out of my mouth and nose and covering my head.” 

In 1985, he settled in Paris, starting the small press Gilgamesh editions―later moving to London in 1996―where, with his wife Margaret Obank, he publishes and edits “Banipal”, the best-known English-language journal for Arab literature.

Shimon’s cinematic, autobiographical novel An Iraqi in Paris appeared in a revised English edition in 2011. “The Independent” described it as “an Arab answer to Miller’s Tropic of Cancer”. 

Samuel Shimon lives in London.