Late for Tea at the Deer Palace by Tamara Chalabi

Late for Tea at the Deer Palace by Tamara Chalabi

`Tamara's tale is not about WMD or insurgentsIt is the story of a bourgeois Iraqi family set against the opulent backdrop of the Ottoman Empire ... It is the story of Iraq, but told from an Iraqi woman's perspective; then it also becomes the story of a young woman's struggle for identity ... Whimsical, magical ... profound' Telegraph

`A valuable insight into the complexities and compromises of Iraqi political culture...From the sweet buffalo cream her great-grandfather adores to the dancing girls in the risque new cafes her grandfather frequents, the richness of an expired epoch long past is lovingly rendered' Sunday Times

`An absorbing book...a complex family memoir attuned to the beats of Iraqi history...a mediation on exile, a moving family portrait, thoughtful and well-researched, Late for Tea at the Deer Palace gives Iraq, as much as the Chalabi family, its story' Spectator

`It takes a lot of skill to interweave the history of a nation with that of a family and it is a tribute to Chalabi that Late for Tea at the Deer Palace is such an accomplished book. It is a moving memoir of a prominent family surviving the occasionally terrifying challenges of one of the world's most troubled and turbulent countries' Literary Review

Tamara Chalabi has a PhD from Harvard University in History. Her first book, 'The Shi'is of Jabal'Amil and the New Lebanon: 1918-1943' was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2006. She has written for the 'Sunday Times', 'New Republic', 'Wall Street Journal', 'Slate' and 'Prospect', on war, culture, encounters, and identities. She lives in London.