A Sky So Close - Hardcover

A young woman growingup in rural Iraq finds her simple provincial life irrevocably altered by her family's relocation to Baghdad, her study of Western music and ballet at the behest of her English mother, the angst of teenage discovery, the bitter realities of the war between Iran and Iraq, her father's death and mother's illness, and her first love affair. 12,500 first printing.

haunting coming-of-age story about a girl growing up in wartime Iraq was the subject of heated controversy when it was published in the Middle East; now in English, it offers American readers a rare chance to experience an Iraqi childhood.
The frank, determined narrator is a schoolgirl living in a small town in the Iraqi countryside when the book opens. Torn between the cultures of her parents, she loves the simple pleasures of provincial life in her father's native land but, at the urging of her English mother, she is thrown into the study of Western music and ballet and becomes a devoted dancer by the time the family relocates to Baghdad. Even as the city around her is transformed by the blackouts and
deprivations of the war between Iran and Iraq, she propels herself passionately through the full range of teenage discovery. The death of her father, her first love affair, and her mother's unexpected illness carry her into adulthood and ultimately to London, where she confront