When the Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad
By Mona Yahia

In this vivid story of growing up in the 1960’s, Mona Yahia tells a very personal story set against the backdrop of political upheaval in an increasingly fractured society. Lina clings to childhood and the security of her youth during the last peaceful period for the 2500-year-old Jewish community in Iraq. As violent coups, arrests, and executions become everyday occurrences, Lina’s family must leave the country they have called home for generations. In the dangerous flight to the border, they must evade the security police, traverse perilous mountains, and entrust their lives and safety to strangers.

In a time when images of carnage and chaos in Iraq flash daily across our television screens, this novel offers an intimate glimpse into the Iraq of the author’s childhood; a place she recollects with affection and nostalgia despite the circumstances of her departure. When the Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad is an unsentimental portrait of a youth disrupted by the violence of political unrest and revolution. Avoiding blame and self-pity, Yahia simply and eloquently evokes the confusion of an adolescent grappling to understand notions of home, family, belonging, prejudice, and ignorance. This timely novel provides readers a window into the experience of a child caught in the fallout of religious bigotry and war.

Mona Yahia was born in Baghdad in 1954 and escaped with her family to Israel in 1970. She studied Psychology at Tel Aviv University and worked as a trainer in the School for Army Commanders. In 1985, she moved to Germany to study fine arts. This is her first novel, and has been published in Great Britain, Germany, and France.

April 2007
5 1/2 x 8 /2 in., hardcover, 368 pages
ISBN: 978-0-8076-1582-9
$22.50

Winner of the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize for Fiction