A review by andrew61
The Corpse Washer by Sinan Antoon

5.0

An astonishing book which charts the life of a very ordinary Iraqi man from the 1980's, as his older brother a doctor is recruited in to the military for the Iran Iraq war, until 2006 when he is coping with the sectarian violence in a Baghdad torn by the invasion. The narrator is Rawad whose father is a corpse washer who wants him to follow his career rather than his love of art. The Corpse washer is a beautiful and evocative role (of which I had never heard) similar to undertaker but with a religious significance as the body of the deceased has to be washed in a very ritualistic way to allow entry to heaven. The scenes where bodies are washed by his father and later Rawad are brutal in their depiction of the violence in the streets but wonderful in their beauty and respect of the body of the deceased, which contrasts the wonder of a religion in one respect with the inhumanity of the Shiite/Sunni battle and the horrors inflicted on fellow followers. It is a heartbreaking picture of a people and culture ravaged by a dictatorship and a subsequent needless invasion and the brilliance of the prose is that you see beyond the headlines to a people steeped in history, poetry, literature and art which makes the reader aware of the individual beyond often cartoon like portrayal of Iraqi's we see in much of the media. However it is more than that as it also tells of love, sacrifice, parental relationships, and the pain of loss in all forms. Definitely one of my books of the year and I cannot recommend it highly enough as a brilliant story of an Iraq we do not always see, the wonder therefore of fiction is its ability to allow the reader to imagine the fact of real life and humanise it.