PRAISE FOR MY FATHER'S PARADISE

"Graceful and resonant . . . A personal undertaking for a son who admits he never understood his unassuming, penny-pinching immigrant father, a man who spent three decades obsessively cataloging the words of his moribund mother tongue. Sabar once looked at his father with shame, scornful of the alien who still bore scars on his back from childhood bloodlettings. This book, he writes, is a chance to make amends."
– New York Times Sunday Book Review


"If Ariel Sabar's My Father's Paradise were only about his father's life, it would be a remarkable enough story about the psychic costs of immigration. But Sabar's family history turns out to be more than the chronicle of one man's efforts to retain something of his homeland in new surroundings. It's also a moving story about the near-death of an ancient language and the tiny flicker of life that remains in it. . . . The chapters describing Yona's budding success as a linguist are thrilling."
– Washington Post Book World


"A wonderful, enlightening journey, a voyage with the power to move readers deeply even as it stretches across differences of culture, family, and memory."
– Christian Science Monitor

“A powerful story of the meaning of family and tradition inside a little-known culture.”

        – San Francisco Chronicle

"A biography, a memoir, a meticulously reconstructed history of a largely vanished people and place, and a meditation on one of the world's oldest languages. Transcending mere reportage, it acquires a novel-like warp and weft."
– Los Angeles Times

A "remarkable new memoir . . . Sabar's Paradise is especially noteworthy because of its multilayered narrative. While it begins with a young man's personal and familial crisis, it ends up exploring universal themes about the linguistic origins of culture and about the vital importance of tradition to the health of any community."
– Philadelphia Inquirer

"Sabar offers something rare and precious – a tale of hope and continuity that can be passed on for generations. . . . Readers can only be grateful to him for unearthing the history of a family, a people and a very different image of Iraq."
– Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)


"Be forewarned: you will lose sleep over this book. . . . [Sabar] mesmerizes with the very first sentences. . . . In the tradition of the famed storytellers of Zakho, Sabar narrates a saga so touching, so amazing, so miraculous that the reader will feel awe for the resiliency of the human spirit. . . . Unlike many memoirs flooding the book market these days, My Father’s Paradise is both unique and universal.”
– Roanoke (Va.) Times


"With the novelistic skill of a Levantine storyteller . . . Sabar explores the conflicting demands of love and tradition, the burdens and blessings of an ancient culture encountering the 21st century. A well-researched text falling somewhere between journalism and memoir, sustained by Mesopotamian imagination.”
– Kirkus Reviews

"A book for readers who hanker after ancient mysteries blended with modern-day suspense: You won't get much closer to a real Indiana Jones tale."
– Santa Cruz (Calif.) Sentinel

"[Sabar's] a lovely writer, slyly adapting his voice as needed to write about the different generations, shifting from the mode of a storyteller to the mode of a journalist. One of the best recent memoirs I've read."
– Huffington Post

"Taut and extravagant. A sweeping saga with the cadence of a Biblical tale." – Daniel Asa Rose, O. Henry Prize winner and author of Hiding Places: A Father and his Sons Retrace Their Family’s Escape from the Holocaust

"An enchanting combination of history, family and discovery – Ariel Sabar’s chronicle of his journey is flat-out wonderful."
– Rabbi David Wolpe, author of Why Faith Matters


A "thoughtful, touching book. . . . I could not read quickly enough as the Sabars worked to resurrect the past."
– Elle magazine, Readers' Prize selection, October 2008


"Excellent. . . . The story is told with novelistic attention to narrative and detail, but its heart is Ariel’s heart, that of a son searching with love for the meaning of his relationship with his father."
– The Providence (RI) Journal


"Sabar's trip to his father's village yields a fresh perspective on such places as Baghdad and Mosul while introducing readers to a slice of Iraqi culture that has all but vanished."
– Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"What makes My Father's Paradise a lovely, meaningful book is that Ariel Sabar's search has unexpected conclusions."
– The Book Studio (WETA/PBS)

"Written with a reporter's flair for people and places . . . Recommended."
– Library Journal


"A sensitive exploration . . . [Sabar's grandmother] emerges as a quiet heroine."
– BookPage


"This touching and brilliantly written book tells an incredible story of a man divided among three cultures. The striking discontinuities in Yona Sabar’s journey reveal the transformations of an immigrant’s life as much as its trials and heartbreak."
– Sammy Smooha, Ph.D., winner of the 2008 Israel Prize for Sociology and author of Arabs and Jews in Israel


"A lyrical and moving . . . portrait of a lost world. The author renders his father's story with incredible understanding and pathos. It is beautifully written, and readers should run, not walk, to the bookstore to buy it."
– World Jewish Digest


"An involving memoir that works as both a family saga and an examination of a lost but treasured community."
– Booklist


"Extraordinarily compelling . . . A breakthrough work that provides the reader with a well-researched history of Kurdish Jewry intertwined with an intimate family saga [and] a critical eye towards the erosion of history and the ways in which history shapes who we are as human beings."
– Sephardic Heritage Update


"Sabar conjures up life in Jewish Kurdistan with the colorful story-telling skills worthy of A Thousand and One Nights. ... This narrative is a significant contribution to the much ignored history of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews."
– The Jerusalem Report


"A hot item on the Jewish book talk circuit"
– Baltimore Jewish Times


"I’m in love with a book about a Bermuda-shorts-and-T-shirt-wearing Jewish boy who grew up in Los Angeles and the odd, frugal scholar from Kurdish Iraq who is his father."
– Hadassah Magazine


"Fascinating and moving . . . My Father’s Paradise is an important contribution to literature about Jewish history, language, identity, and culture, as well as what it means to be a Jew in the modern world."
– Jewish Book World


An "outstanding book."
– The New York Jewish Week & The Los Angeles Jewish Journal

• • •

MY FATHER'S PARADISE won a National Book Critics Circle Award, chosen by a national group of 900 active book reviewers as the best autobiography published in the United States in 2008.

It also won the Rodda Book Award, given by the Church and Synagogue Library Association to the adult book published from 2005 to 2008 that best "exhibits excellence in writing and has contributed significantly to congregational libraries through promotion of spiritual growth." 

In August 2009, My Father's Paradise was named a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, an international award recognizing works of "high literary quality" that help promote peace and global understanding.

The book also made The Christian Science Monitor's "Best Nonfiction Books of 2008" list, and was a Philadelphia Inquirer staff pick. It made the American Booksellers Association's "Indie Next List," and the Publishers Weekly list of "hot" indie titles.

My Father's Paradise was chosen as the annual "Jewish community read" in Baltimore, Denver, Long Island, Philadelphia, and The Twin Cities (Minn.).

Mamo Yona Gabbay
Master Jewish Storyteller from Kurdish Iraq
Photo by Stephanie Sabar