An ancient land. A lost language. And a wayward son who never knew what he and his father shared. Until they embarked on an epic journey into their family's extraordinary past. Ariel Sabar's father, Yona, was born in a mud hut in the remote Kurdish region of Northern Iraq. Protected by towering mountains, the Jews of Zakho lived peacefully among Muslims and Christians for hundreds of years. Rugged lumberjacks and humble peddlers, self-made mystics and gifted storytellers, the members of this Lost Tribe of Israel were so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. But in the late 1940s, the outside world came crashing in, and Yona Sabar would be the last boy bar mitzvahed in Zakho. In My Father's Paradise, father and son travel to today's war-torn Iraq in a quest to rediscover a forgotten land. As Ariel retraces his father's footsteps, he brings to life the eccentric characters, extraordinary determination, and fascinating historical odyssey of the Kurdish Jews. In the early 1950s, young Yona and his family were part of the mass exodus of 120,000 Jews from Iraq –– one of the largest peacetime airlifts in history. In Israel, Kurdish Jews struggled against bigotry and poverty, watching helplessly as their ancient culture and language slipped into oblivion. As Yona worked his way through night school in Jerusalem and then, against all odds, to Yale University, he devoted himself to the rescue of his people's vanishing traditions. Now an esteemed professor of Near Eastern languages at UCLA, Yona is one of the world's most sought-after experts on Aramaic. In retelling his father's story, Ariel Sabar finds his own. This deeply moving, vividly told history reads like a novel of biblical proportions. My Father's Paradise is a stirring tale of hope and redemption in an Iraq very different from the one in the headlines today.