Late for Tea at the Deer Palace

Bol Partner

A lyrical, haunting, multi-generational memoir of one family’s tempestuous century in Iraq from 1900 to the present. The Chalabis are one of the oldest and most prominent families in Iraq. For centuries they have occupied positions of honour and responsibility, loyally serving first the Ottoman Empire and, later, the national government. And yet despite her ancestors’ deep ties to the region, until very recently Tamara Chalabi’s understanding of her homeland was based almost entirely on stories. Raised in exile, she knew Iraq only through the homesick reminiscences of her paternal family, her uncles and her formidable grandparents. In ‘Late for Tea at the Deer Palace’, Tamara Chalabi explores the dramatic story of her extraordinary family’s history in this beautiful, passionate and troubled land. From the grand opulence of her great-grandfather’s house and the birth of the modern state, through to the elegant Iraq of her grandmother Bibi, who lived the life of a queen in Baghdad, and finally to her own story, that of the ex-pat daughter of a family in exile, Chalabi takes us on an unforgettable and eye-opening journey. This is the story of a lost homeland, whose turbulent transformations over the twentieth century left gaping wounds at the hearts not only of the family it exiled, but also of the elegant, sophisticated world it once represented. When Tamara visited her once-beautiful ancestral land for the first time in 2003, she found a country she didn’t recognize – and a nation on the brink of a terrifying and uncertain new beginning. Lyrical and unique, this exquisite multi-generational memoir brings together east and west, the poetic and the political as it brings to life a land of beauty, grace and longing that has been all but lost behind recent headlines.

Bol

“It’s an admirable endeavor to have Iraq addressed by someone who is in so many ways able to approach it from two worlds. . . . Tamara Chalabi has the stuff, in every sense, that is needful to undertake this.” —Christopher HitchensIn the tradition of Jung Chang’s Wild Swans and Bhutto Benazir’s Reconciliation comes Tamara Chalabi’s unique memoir of returning to her family’s homeland, Iraq. In this epic story of one daughter’s journey through the annals of her family’s tumultuous history, Chalabi’s powerful voice and piercing vision illuminate her country and its people as never before.Just ten days after Baghdad’s fall in 2003, Tamara Chalabi arrived in the city after a lifetime in exile—finally entering the homeland she’d known only through stories and her own imagination.Investigating four generations of her family’s history at the forefront of Iraqi society, Chalabi offers a rich portrait of Middle Eastern life and a provocative look at a lost Iraq. Unforgettable characters provide glimpses of the end of the Ottoman Empire, the birth of the Iraqi state, the flowering of “the Paris of the Middle East,” and Iraq’s descent into chaos. At once intimate and magisterial, Chalabi’s memoir of return and reclamation vividly captures the rich history of a country shattered by war and a family that has never forgotten its past.