The Iraqi novelist, essayist and critic Ali Bader is well-known for his creative fiction and travel literature. His latest book, “The Stranger’s Newspaper: An Appointment in a Café,” takes readers on a wide-ranging tour of the East-West relationship.
Bader is one of Iraq’s 1990s generation. His first novel, “Papa Sartre”, was republished several times after its first edition in Beirut in 2001 and has been translated into several languages. It won the State Prize for Literature in Baghdad in 2002 and Tunisia’s Abu al-Qassim Al-Shabi Prize in 2003.
Bader has published more than a dozen other novels, including “The Family’s Winter” (2002), “The Tobacco Keeper” (2008), “Kings of the Sands” (2009), and “The Infidel Woman” (2015), as well as many essays and plays.
Bader has lived in Damascus, Beirut, Amman, Addis Ababa, New York, Berlin, and Amsterdam. Although he left Iraq more than 20 years ago most of his writing is set in Baghdad. He rejoices in Iraq’s cultural life and rejects totalitarian ideas.
Dialogue Between Cultures
“The Stranger’s Newspaper” («صحيفة الغرباء»), published in Arabic by Alka Publishing and Translation, in Paris, presents a series of diary-like entries on conversations the author has had with strangers in cafes around the world.