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The Wolf of Baghdad: Memoir of a Lost Homeland
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In the 1940s a third of Baghdad’s population was Jewish. Within a decade nearly all 150,000 had been expelled, killed or had escaped. This graphic memoir of a lost homeland is a wordless narrative by an author homesick for a home she has never visited.
Transported by the power of music to her ancestral home in the old Jewish quarter of Baghdad, the author encounters its gho ...more
Transported by the power of music to her ancestral home in the old Jewish quarter of Baghdad, the author encounters its gho ...more
Paperback, 208 pages
Published
January 30th 2020
by Myriad
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Shaun Tan's The Arrival meets Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. Interspersed with prose testimony and reminiscence, this dialogue-free graphic novel about the author's imagined return to a Jewish Baghdad populated by ghosts is a moving reconstruction of a lost society, suffused with a longing for a home that never was.
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This is a graphic non-fiction charting the experiences of Iraqi Jews who were persecuted following WWII through to their expulsion in the 1960s and 70s. It's a period of history I had no awareness of at all, and this opened a door to yet another area which my school education failed to reference - namely that Naziism was not just confined to Europe, it extended much much further and much later in history.
While I found the content to be important and illuminating, the style was too sparse for me. ...more
While I found the content to be important and illuminating, the style was too sparse for me. ...more

In all likelihood, you’ll have come across a few of Carol’s cartoons as The Surreal McCoy, but you may not be aware of her heritage. Carol’s family herald from Iraq which, back in the 1940s, had a population which was a third Jewish. Within just ten years almost all of the 150,000 Jewish people of Iraq had fled.
Carol has never visited her ancestral homeland. However, through the stories and photographs of her family, she is spirited away to a time when her family lived happily and comfortably in ...more
Carol has never visited her ancestral homeland. However, through the stories and photographs of her family, she is spirited away to a time when her family lived happily and comfortably in ...more

As a Muslim Iraqi, when I first came across this book and found out it was from a Jewish Iraqi perspective and about the Jewish Iraqi community, I felt it was important for me to read since their history is just as much mine and yet it is actively erased and ignored.
This memoir evokes a range of emotions; nostalgia, joy, curiosity, sadness, heartbreak, a sense of loss and many more.
It’s very easy to follow and understand,
Carol Isaacs has done an amazing job with this memoir and has only urged ...more
This memoir evokes a range of emotions; nostalgia, joy, curiosity, sadness, heartbreak, a sense of loss and many more.
It’s very easy to follow and understand,
Carol Isaacs has done an amazing job with this memoir and has only urged ...more

#review | It was a fine warm morning when I sat down to read The Wolf of Baghdad by Carol Isaacs. For as long as I can remember, I haven't read graphic novels. I used to peruse them in my childhood. I didn't know what to expect now that I finally had one in my hands. I never suspected I'll end up loving it as much as I did in a span of two hours. 🌸
Set in the 1900s, The Wolf of Baghdad is a wordless narrative taking us to the ancestral home of Carol Isaacs in Baghdad where she explores the histor ...more
Set in the 1900s, The Wolf of Baghdad is a wordless narrative taking us to the ancestral home of Carol Isaacs in Baghdad where she explores the histor ...more

A gentle meditative immersion into a way of life long past. This pictorial memoir communicates so much with short testimonials from those left of the Jewish community that fled Baghdad at the turn of the Second World War.
What surprised me most about this book was how prosperous multicultural cohabitation once seemed to be in Iraq. In stories of war-torn countries, the sweet mundane details aren't often shared but it is so important when they are. I especially enjoyed the connecting narrative of ...more
What surprised me most about this book was how prosperous multicultural cohabitation once seemed to be in Iraq. In stories of war-torn countries, the sweet mundane details aren't often shared but it is so important when they are. I especially enjoyed the connecting narrative of ...more

Found this fascinating. Unique way of delivering history as a ghost travelling through her ancestors homeland. I never knew Baghdad had such a big Jewish population and that nazi Germany dropped propaganda cussing them to flee their homes forever. There were 150,000 Jews in Baghdad, today there are 6. Such a sad and tragic history although them fleeing there has enriched other parts of the world. Really enjoyed being part of this exploration of the past which made me feel like I was there.

The Wolf of Baghdad by Carol Isaacs is a dazzling and transportive graphic memoir of the lost homeland the author has never visited. In the 1940s, a third of Baghdad’s population was Jewish, having lived harmoniously with Muslims and Christians for decades. With the rise of antisemitism which spread from Europe, nearly all of Iraq’s 150,000 Jews had fled within a decade, with now only five remaining in Baghdad today. Through short, simple captions appearing as memories of the author’s long-gone
...more
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