Samuel Shimon: An Iraqi in Paris

Banipal Publishing, 2026, softcover, 282 pages, 12.7 x 19.69

An Iraqi in Paris is known throughout the Arab world as the best-selling “gem of autobiographical writing”, by an author who has been called “a relentless raconteur”, “a modern Odysseus”, “the Iraqi Don Quixote”. 

Providentially leaving Iraq just before Saddam Hussein installs himself as President, the Assyrian narrator of An Iraqi in Paris, Samuel Shimon, dreams of becoming a Hollywood film-maker after his hero John Ford, but after arrest and torture in Syria – accused of being a Jewish spy on account of his name, similar treatment in Jordan, and escaping execution in Lebanon by armed militia, he eventually lands on the streets of Paris, where he meets up with Jean Valjean and tries to escape his fate as a homeless refugee with wit, humour and amorous adventures, all the while writing the story of his childhood, his deaf-mute father Kika, and film buff Kiryakos.

After all his experiences, Samuel Shimon, “the runaway from museums”, writes an urgently needed and timely “manifesto of tolerance”.

Translated from the Arabic by Christina Phillips and Piers Amodia with the author.