Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize

“A powerful story of the meaning of family and tradition inside a little-known culture.”
– San Francisco Chronicle

“A biography, a memoir, a meticulously reconstructed history of a largely vanished people and place, and a meditation on one of the world’s oldest languages. Transcending mere reportage, it acquires a novel-like warp and weft.”
– Los Angeles Times

“If Ariel Sabar’s My Father’s Paradise were only about his father’s life, it would be a remarkable enough story…But Sabar’s family history turns out to be more than the chronicle of one man’s efforts to retain something of his homeland in new surroundings. It’s also a moving story about the near-death of an ancient language and the tiny flicker of life that remains in it.”
– Washington Post

A “remarkable new memoir…especially noteworthy because of its multilayered narrative.”
– Philadelphia Inquirer

“Sabar offers something rare and precious—a tale of hope and continuity that can be passed on for generations…Readers can only be grateful to him for unearthing the history of a family, a people and a very different image of Iraq.”
– Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)