Of Loss and Lavender: A Novel

by Sinan Antoon

In this achingly beautiful novel of trauma, memory, and identity, two Iraqi men struggle to start a new life in the US after the Gulf War.

Sami, a retired doctor, lives with his son and grandchildren in Brooklyn. As he tries to navigate this new city, it becomes increasingly clear he is losing his memory due to dementia. Every day he sinks deeper into old memories of a life in Iraq before the war.

Omar arrived in the US with no family. He has run away from Iraq with a fake identity. As a deserter, he was punished by having an ear cut off. In Baghdad, this is an unmissable mark of shame. Omar works menial jobs, creates a new identity—comically passing as Puerto Rican—and dreams of reconstructive surgery to get his ear, and his dignity, back.

Their stories converge powerfully when it becomes clear they were connected in Iraq at a moment that was pivotal for them both. Deftly exploring the aftermath of war and relocation, Of Loss and Lavender creates a moving portrait of life in exile.

Genres: Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

Published March 17, 2026

About the author

سنان أنطون
شاعر وروائي وأكاديمي ولد في بغداد عام ١٩٦٧. حصل على بكالوريوس في الأدب الإنكليزي من جامعة بغداد. هاجر بعد حرب الخليج ١٩٩١ إلى الولايات المتحدة حيث أكمل دراساته وحصل على الماجستير من جامعة جورجتاون عام ١٩٩٥ والدكتوراه في الأدب العربي من جامعة هارڤارد بامتياز عام ٢٠٠٦.
نشر روايته الأولى"إعجام" عام ٢٠٠٣ وتُرجمت إلى الإنكليزية والنرويجية والبرتغالية والألمانية والإيطالية . نشر روايته الثانية "وحدها شجرة الرمان" عام ٢٠١٠ وترجمها بنفسه إلى الإنكليزية وفازت الترجمة بجائزة بانيبال-سيف غباش عام ٢٠١٥ لأفضل ترجمة أدبية من العربية. نشر روايته الثالثة "يا مريم" عام ٢٠١٢ ووصلت إلى القائمة القصيرة للجائزة العالمية للرواية العربية. وصدرت ترجمتها الإسبانية عام عن دار نشر ترنر في مدريد عام ٢٠١٤. صدرت روايته الرابعة "فهرس" في بداية عام ٢٠١٦. له مجموعتان شعريتان: "موشور مبلل بالحروب" (ميريت، القاهرة، ٢٠٠٤) و "ليل واحد في كل المدن" (دار الجمل، بيروت، ٢٠١٠). صدرت ترجمة لأشعاره بالإنكليزية عن دار هاربر ماونتن برس عام ٢٠٠٧ بعنوان .The Baghdad Blues وترجم شعره إلى الإيطالية والألمانية والتركية والإسبانية والهندية. أخرج فلماً وثائقياً عن العراق بعد الغزو بعنوان About Baghdad (حول بغداد) صوّر في بغداد في تموز، عام ٢٠٠٣.
ترجم أكثر من مئتي قصيدة من الشعر العربي الحديث إلى الإنكليزية ورُشِحَت ترجمته لقصائد محمود درويش لجائزة بين Pen للترجمة عام ٢٠٠٤. ترجم "في حضرة الغياب" لمحمود درويش إلى الإنكليزية (دار آرشيبيلاغو، ٢٠١١) وفازت الترجمة بجائزة أفضل ترجمة أدبية في الولايات المتحدة وكندا من جمعية المترجمين الأدبيين لذلك العام. كما ترجم مختارات من أشعار سعدي يوسف صدرت بعنوان "أيهذا الحنين يا عدوي" (دار غريوولف، ٢٠١٢). عمل أستاذا للأدب العربي في كلية دارتموث في ٢٠٠٣-٢٠٠٥، و يعمل أستاذاً للأدب العربي في جامعة نيويورك منذ عام ٢٠٠٥. نشر العديد من المقالات والدراسات الأكاديمية عن الشعر العربي الحديث.

Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist and translator. His poems and essays (in Arabic) have appeared in as-Safir, al-Adab, al-Akhbar, Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, Masharef and (in English) in The Nation, Middle East Report, Al-Ahram Weekly, Banipal, Journal of Palestine Studies, The Massachusetts Review, World Literature Today, Ploughshares, Washington Square Journal, and the New York Times.

He has published two collections of poetry; Mawshur Muballal bil-Hurub (Cairo, 2003) and Laylun Wahidun fi Kull al-Mudun (One Night in All Cities) (Beirut/Baghdad: Dar al-Jamal, 2010). His novels include I`jaam (2003), which has been translated into English as I`jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody (City Lights, 2006) as well as Norwegian, German, Portuguese, and Italian, Wahdaha Shajarat al-Rumman (The Pomegranate Alone) (Beirut: al-Mu'assassa al-`Arabiyya, 2010), forthcoming from Yale University Press in Spring 2013 as The Corpse Washer, and Ya Maryam (Beirut: Dar al-Jamal, 2012). His translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s last prose book In the Presence of Absence, was published by Archipelago Books in 2011 and won the 2012 National Translation Award given by the American LIterary Translators Association (ALTA). His co-translation (with Peter Money) of a selection of Saadi Youssef's late poetry was published by Graywolf in November 2012.

Sinan is a member of the Editorial Review Board of the Arab Studies Journal. He is an associate professor at the Gallatin School, New York University and co-founder and co-editor of the cultural page of Jadaliyya.

Reviews

[Angela M]

3.5 rounded up to 4 stars .
Two men from Iraq settling in the US after the Gulf War. Their stories were moving. Sami, a cardiologist from Baghdad now living with his son and his family is suffering from dementia . Omar, a deserting Iraqi soldier, a refugee, whose ear has been cut off, is trying to make a life for himself in the US .

Their stories are gut wrenching and I couldn’t help but want Omar to make it here as he works hard to fit in diligently working on farms, in a restaurant, trying to form relationships . I couldn’t help but want some peace to come to Sami as he remembers pieces of his past, his losses. I waited patiently for a connection between the two men, but it’s not until the end that we see it when the lovely title of the book unexpectedly hit me in the gut.

The novel is one continuous narrative blending their stories that are not separated by chapters moving back and forth between the two , their past and their present, but the structure of the novel felt disjointed . Having said that, there are poetic song lyrics interspersed and some wonderfully written passages . I was especially moved by this non clinical explanation of what it might feel like to have to have Alzheimer’s: “ He likened memories to a big and beautiful carpet, adorned with the most wonderful shapes and colors, that is shredded, thread by thread, until nothing remains.” The story is touching and relevant.

I received a copy of this book from Other Press through Edelweiss.

[Karthik]

A poet indeed, this book moves in such a reflective, unassuming manner—meditating on how our past lives linger into our present. It’s the type of story where not much necessarily happens, but it still conjures and evokes such emotion.

I could oddly keep reading even more if there was more to say, but still, where it ends is such a striking revelation that it hits harder than I could have even imagined.

[Hadeel]

4.5. pain and suffering

[Osama]

يعيش الكاتب العراقي المبدع سنان أنطون ويعمل في الولايات المتحدة. قرأتُ كامل نتاجه الروائي، واختتمته مؤخراً برواية "خزامى" بترجمتها الإنجليزية الصادرة هذا العام. الرواية تدمج قصتين لرجلين عراقيين تركا بلدهما هربا من الحرب والقمع ولكن تبقى ذكرياتهم عصية على النسيان.
​تضم القائمة أدناه رواياته الخمس المتوفرة في معظمها باللغتين العربية والإنجليزية:
​إعجام (2003)
​وحدها شجرة الرمان (2010)
​يا مريم (2012)
​فهرس (2016)
​خزامى (2023)

[Basma Battah]

I finished this book today and thought it was great! I felt heartbroken for Sami and the tragedies he suffered with the loss of his family members. And then to be in his mind while he’s suffering from dementia was even more heartbreaking. I also felt so sad for Omar feeling like he doesn’t belong, self-conscious about his ear, and feeling the need to lie about where he’s from. I was then shocked at the ending when the two characters met! I did not see that coming. Lots of emotions reading this book and i truly enjoyed it!

Finally, thank you for the glossary in the back of the book. While i understood more than 80% of the Arabic words, i still needed to translate a few of them.

[Dhuha Wasfie]

“homeland? what homeland when you don’t own a thing or a foot in it? not even your own body that was formed in your mother’s womb. the government owns your body.”

twin threads & dreamy uneven timelines; omar and sami’s interweaved narratives lace together themes of belonging, memory, grief, & love. it’s a quite odd experience to read about a homeland that you never really got to know. but this book is for the iraqis living in the diaspora, for whom shared cultural values migrate & change with time. shed a few tears for instances of connection.

[Grada (BoekenTrol)]

4.5⭐

After finishing this book today, I sat still for a while. I just needed some time to let this book sink in.
The rhythm it had, the story it told me, the images it made me see.

It is realistic and poetic at the same time. It tells a story of hardships, but also of hope. Of losing people that are near, but also of finding new ones or come home to old ones.

I found this a wonderful gem, had not expected this at all behind that seemingly relatively simple title.

Absolutely recommended!

[Marnina Hornstein]

3.5 stars. This was well written and very moving. I struggle with books that are not chronological/ multiple voices but I did like how everything came together at the end. Beautifully written characters.

[Leeanna]

The grief of life, loss, and love 😞

[Karim Malak]

a heart wrenching read

A thorough and apt translation of Khuzami, the Arabic novel from which Of loss and Lavender is translated from. Few authors have the same dexterity in English and Arabic, but Sinan is gifted.

[Richard Derus]

Real Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: In this achingly beautiful novel of trauma, memory, and identity, two Iraqi men struggle to start a new life in the US after the Gulf War.

Sami, a retired doctor, lives with his son and grandchildren in Brooklyn. As he tries to navigate this new city, it becomes increasingly clear he is losing his memory due to dementia. Every day he sinks deeper into old memories of a life in Iraq before the war.

Omar arrived in the US with no family. He has run away from Iraq with a fake identity. As a deserter, he was punished by having an ear cut off. In Baghdad, this is an unmissable mark of shame. Omar works menial jobs, creates a new identity—comically passing as Puerto Rican—and dreams of reconstructive surgery to get his ear, and his dignity, back.

Their stories converge powerfully when it becomes clear they were connected in Iraq at a moment that was pivotal for them both. Deftly exploring the aftermath of war and relocation, Of Loss and Lavender creates a moving portrait of life in exile.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A novel of displacement. A story of male identity that, in centering differing...often competing...cultural notions of masculinity, shines a klieg light into the endless void at men's cores left by their "failures," inabilities, unwillingness to live measured by that toxic measure.

What Author Antoon did by bringing these oddly assorted immigrants to the US was subtle, clever, and tendentious. Omar is a chancer. He's blagged his way into and out of trouble since...well, who knows, we're not vouchsafed his whole life's story but I'd bet my very own United States dollars that he's been behaving this way his whole life. Omar is running even when he stands still, never at rest because rest is the point when "They" can get you in their sights to pin you in your place, the one "They" have decided you belong.

Sami's never run in his life. Towards or away from a goal or a problem, he's been steady. His aging mind has fractured from the weight of his memories. He's not agile, he's strong. Strength, unlike agility, breaks when overextended. He tries to comprehend Brooklyn, not an easy task for the native from the US, and fails. In his failure to become a Brooklynite, Sami becomes the dependent he was always responsible for, the helpless and confused neophyte he always guided...the not-powerful responsibilty in place of a lifetime as the powerful protector. Wandering in his memories he needs to build his identity Sami has no traction thanks to dementia. We meet him before the dementia robs him of enough capacity to know he's losing his battle. It is the hardest to endure of all dementia's thieveries. Sami is still Sami. Cruel is our word for this moment of struggle, outsiders who observe it; internally, no one who knows it intimately has ever told us, because they can't.

When you use these men as each others' counterpoise you get the fulcrum of the system located at masculinity. Lost, found, rejected, but "Achilles absent was Achilles still," in Homer's distillation of verity into aperçu. In bringing these wounded-by-past-lives souls to a country that shares none of their lived experiences, Author Antoon removes all the props we use to build identity from them. They have no obvious place in the cultural map they must now use to navigate Life. Omar loves this because it means he controls his narrative, he has no further need to resist the boxes he's forced to occupy because they don't exist to threaten him. It's liberation, yes, but it comes as always at a price. Belonging, the sense of purpose that it grants, is also in those boxes that confine, shape, define Omar (including his name, fictional though it is). Freedom isn't free. Never has that truth been more stark than to Omar in Brooklyn.

Living your life in translation is never easy. It is a hidden cost of Othering those not deemed "mainstream" or those who are immigrants in similar degrees. Author Antoon is an iraqi immigrant to New York, a novelist and (it says in his biography) poet who translates from (and/or to) Arabic; It shows in this very good novel. It feels like he is translating the experience of masculinity from one culture to another, like the characters are finding ways to make sense of the world that use words no longer part of their fluency. Sami's losses are structural, intrinsic; Omar's are voluntary, elective; both are costly and exact significant emotional tolls on each man's journey through the maze of Brooklyn.

As a professor at New York University, Author Antoon is no doubt drawing on his own immigrant experience in the vast, bewildering social system of New York. I hope the world here has treated him with greater kindness than either of these characters received. I offer the story an incomplete fifth star because I was immersed in the flume of the story's canal, the high-pressure constriction that roils and directs but does not deliver to an end point the narrative waters. What, in the end, did Omar and Sami do as a result of occupying the same canal? They changed; but in tandem not in response to each other.

I derived a lot of pleasure from the story. I hope y'all will give it your time and treasure. I think the way each character experienced their quest after identity was so poignantly masculine, so painfully rooted in their manhood, that many women would get significant value from this male interiority.

[Abeer]

A tragic, poetic novel about two different Iraqis of two different generations coming to America, living lives that seem are unrelated to one another until the ending. One had his ear cut off by the Iraqi government for refusing military service, the elder is a retired physician suffering from dementia wishing to return to his home in Baghdad.

The depiction of both the terrifying difficulty of living in Iraq under Saddam to the reality of being a brown man in post 9/11 America is really well psychologically depicted through these two different perspectives.

The author did an incredible job depicting the emotional nuances of the main characters along with other Iraqis that they loved or had to respond to - from the wealthy American Iraqis who ignore the traumas to those abroad, to the women they loved back home. I found the author having caricaturistic depictions of the women in America, especially those who had a romantic relationship with Omar. I honestly don’t understand why any of those women would be want to be in a relationship with him, it’s like these women just appeared out of nowhere for the sole purpose of being romantically involved with Omar. Although I deeply empathize with Omar, I don’t think it excuses his very selfish behavior with the women he uses - honestly reminded me of the tropes we brown women complain about brown men - like please go to therapy or figure it out before you involve us in your complex life that you’re not willing to face. Anyway, just my one opinion that has nothing to do with how I rated the book - Omar is unlikable though still very easy to feel sorrow for which really depicts the talents of the author.

Warning: There are graphic depictions of torture that were hard to stomach as you knew this really happened.

[Ebrahim Barzegar]

After Corpse Washer and The Book of Collateral Damage, this is the third novel by Sinan that I’ve read—and I finished it in one sitting by the Wisła River.

The novel unfolds as a single, continuous chapter: one long narrative built from two main storylines that gradually intertwine and converge. What stood out most to me were the short excerpts woven between these narratives, delivered by an unknown narrator. You’re never quite sure who is speaking—is it the author, Omar, or Sa’ad? That ambiguity makes these fragments especially compelling; they’re sharp, reflective, and deeply thought-provoking.

Another highlight is the presence of music in the story. Umm Kulthum’s songs seemed to echo in my head throughout the novel—I couldn’t turn them off. It’s a testament to Sinan’s craftsmanship, drawing readers in not only through vivid imagery but also through an almost auditory experience.

Overall, the novel carries a bleak, heavy atmosphere, which feels true to many stories about Middle Eastern immigrants in the U.S., haunted by trauma—whether from domestic violence or the lasting impact of war. At its core, the book explores themes of homelessness, memory loss, escape, and the struggle with identity and belonging.

[Rachel]

This is a beautifully crafted work. The characters are finely drawn and heartbreaking. The end gobsmacked me.

This work succeeds on so many levels. The experiences of people who leave their home country. Some have wonderful memories and others have memories that are awful. These people have souls in two worlds. Where do they belong. This work creatively illustrated that without the usual tropes.
Bravo to Mr. Antoon.

[Udochi Nwobodo]

This is a writer that likes women and knows how to write desire well. Nothing smutty, but the romantic dialogues are very 'yearny' and romantic. It made me think of romantic love in a new light. Also it provides an interesting addition to the Man vs Bear argument. Not much to say. Just excited to read a male writer that likes women (and doesn't seem he had to learn to)

[Ali Aslan Shahla]

بحران هویت، شرم، خشم و فراموشی دو مهاجر اجباری به زیبایی در کتاب به تصویر کشیده شده است. سرنوشتی تلخ از پس جهانی پر از خشونت که رویای آزادی با جنگ هم به کابوسی برای مردمانش بدل می‌شود.
کتاب اما در تصویر برخورد با یک مهاجر در کشوری غریب ناتوان و ابتر است، انگار بیشتر آنچه در عراق بوده بربریت و شایسته انکار یا فراموشب، و هرچه در جهان غرب است رفاه و آرامش و قابل ستایش است!

[F]

I was very curious to read Sinan’s translation of his own work and he didn’t disappoint. 3 stars because it felt one of the storylines was way more frequent and had more details and backstory than the other which felt unbalanced to me.

[Lydia Page]

Sweet book! It seemed choppy at times but since it’s an uncorrected proof, I assume the final proof is smoother. 3/5