Of Loss and Lavender

A Best Book of the Year So Far by The New Yorker

In this achingly beautiful novel of trauma, memory, and identity, two Iraqi men struggle to start a new life in the United States after the Gulf War.

Sami, a retired doctor, lives with his son and grandchildren in Brooklyn. As he tries to navigate this new city, it becomes increasingly clear he is losing his memory due to dementia. Every day he sinks deeper into old memories of a life in Iraq before the war.

Omar arrived in the US with no family. He has run away from Baghdad with a fake identity. As a deserter, he was punished by having an ear cut off, an unmissable mark of shame. From Detroit to a farm in New Jersey, Omar works menial jobs, creates a new identity—comically passing as Puerto Rican—and dreams of reconstructive surgery to get his ear, and his dignity, back.

As their stories unexpectedly converge Of Loss and Lavender creates a moving portrait of life in exile, deftly exploring the aftermath of war and relocation.