At Rest in the Cherry Orchard

Iraqi Said Jensen, living in Norway, is forever haunted by the ghost of his father, killed by the Iraqi regime before he was born, and nightmarish visions. On being called to Baghdad where a mass grave, possibly holding his father's remains, will be opened, he thinks about the peaceful cherry orchard his neighbour Jakob was laid to rest in. Through the story of Iraqi Said Jensen, who is granted asylum in Norway and builds his life there but is forever haunted by his father's disappearance, Iraqi author Azher Jirjees's debut novel captures brilliantly the way Iraqi life flips from reality to unreality and back as people have to find ways to live with the bloody horrors and deprivation that count as 'normal life', leading to countless people fleeing and countless others thrown into mass graves. A monumental account of human endurance in the face of mounting horrors.

Azher Jirjees is an Iraqi writer and novelist, born in Baghdad in 1973. In 2005, he wrote a satirical book about terrorist militias entitled The Earthly Hell, which resulted in an assassination attempt against him and he was forced to flee the country. His other works include two short story collections, Fouq Bilad al-Sawad (Above the Country of Blackness, 2015) and Saani' al-Halwa (The Sweetmaker, 2017), and two novels. His first novel, At Rest in the Cherry Orchard (al-Nawm f? Haql al-Karaz, 2019), was longlisted for the 2020 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. His second novel The Stone of Happiness was shortlisted for the same prize in 2023.