Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family
    Unavailable
    Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family
    Unavailable
    Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family
    Ebook643 pages14 hours

    Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family

    By Tamara Chalabi

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this ebook

    A lyrical, haunting, multi-generational memoir of one family’s tempestuous century in Iraq from 1900 to the present.

    The Chalabis are one of the oldest and most prominent families in Iraq. For centuries they have occupied positions of honour and responsibility, loyally serving first the Ottoman Empire and, later, the national government.

    In ‘Late for Tea at the Deer Palace’, Tamara Chalabi explores the dramatic story of her extraordinary family’s history in this beautiful, passionate and troubled land. From the grand opulence of her great-grandfather’s house and the birth of the modern state, through to the elegant Iraq of her grandmother Bibi, who lived the life of a queen in Baghdad, and finally to her own story, that of the ex-pat daughter of a family in exile, Chalabi takes us on an unforgettable and eye-opening journey.

    This is the story of a lost homeland, whose turbulent transformations over the twentieth century left gaping wounds at the hearts not only of the family it exiled, but also of the elegant, sophisticated world it once represented. When Tamara visited her once-beautiful ancestral land for the first time in 2003, she found a country she didn’t recognize – and a nation on the brink of a terrifying and uncertain new beginning.

    Lyrical and unique, this exquisite multi-generational memoir brings together east and west, the poetic and the political as it brings to life a land of beauty and grace that has been all but lost behind recent headlines.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateJul 21, 2011
    ISBN9780007443123
    Unavailable
    Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family
    Author

    Tamara Chalabi

    Tamara Chalabi has a PhD in history from Harvard University. 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 and identity. She lives in London and Beirut.

    Related to Late for Tea at the Deer Palace

    Related ebooks

    Middle Eastern History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Arab World’s Star Student

      Apr 9, 2018

      The Arab World’s Star Student
      6 min read

    • Article

      Coded Language

      Jan 20, 2022

      Coded Language
      4 min read

    • Article

      Russian Roulette

      Feb 1, 2021

      As a longterm fan of Dostoevsky (and yes, unusually for a 19th century literary novelist, he does have a kind of fan club, many of whom are adolescents high on the thrill of first encountering his freewheeling combo of philosophical pondering and jaz

      2 min read

    • Article

      King Of Canada

      Oct 8, 2020

      Stereotypically, Canada seems perhaps the dullest land on Earth, with a political life of stable, centrist consensus. Yet this reputation may not be entirely deserved, as shown by the story of Canada’s three-time Prime Minister, William Lyon MacKenzi

      13 min read

    • Article

      Turning Point

      May 5, 2020

      Turning Point
      4 min read

    • Article

      “Mr. Was Admirable”

      May 2, 2022

      “Mr. Was Admirable”
      9 min read

    • Article

      How To Lose An Empire

      Mar 28, 2024

      A PROVINCE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, BAGHDAD IN THE 1820S WAS GOVERNED BY A WÃLI WHOSE habit was to make money by arresting members of the wealthiest families and demanding a ransom for their release. Among those detained was David Sassoon, a member of

      6 min read

    • Article

      “Look At The Londoner!”

      Nov 2, 2023

      “Look At The Londoner!”
      11 min read

    • Article

      Stamp of Arabia

      Apr 8, 2022

      Stamp of Arabia
      2 min read

    • Article

      The White House Bronze:

      May 3, 2021

      The White House Bronze:
      9 min read

    • Article

      Anniversaries

      Apr 14, 2022

      Anniversaries
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Wolf of Baghdad

      Jun 18, 2020

      The Wolf of Baghdad
      3 min read

    • Article

      “From The Babylonian Captivity, Iraq Became A Centre Of Jewish Culture ”

      Jun 9, 2022

      Victoria died last month. She was almost 100 years old, still living on her own in her house in the tranquil north London suburb of Golders Green, far from the turmoil of war and revolution that had marked her life. Victoria was an Iraqi Jew. Spannin

      3 min read

    • Article

      Queen Elizabeth II

      Sep 17, 2022

      Queen Elizabeth II
      14 min read

    • Article

      Book Reviews

      Dec 10, 2022

      No Language! No Nation!: The life and times of The Honourable Ruaraidh Erskine of Marr Gerard Cairns Rymour Books (July 2021) pp. 189 Paperback: £13.99 ISBN: 9781919628608 Considering the advance of Scottish nationalism over the last 20 years, it is

      11 min read

    • Article

      Christmas Quiz 2021

      Nov 25, 2021

      Christmas Quiz 2021
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Richest Man In The World

      Feb 14, 2020

      The Richest Man In The World
      2 min read

    • Article

      Making Up Mike

      Aug 24, 2021

      Making Up Mike
      4 min read

    • Article

      House The of Belle

      Jul 9, 2021

      House The of Belle
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Late for Tea at the Deer Palace

    3.5/5

    14 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A little bit disappointing, in that my sky-high expectations were not met. Still well worth reading.
    • 4/5
      So often what we learn from the nightly news is generic or impersonal. Even the human interest stories they show only touch the surface of complex situations. So when a memoir comes along to expand on our knowledge of historic and recent events, it is invaluable. Of course, a memoir by definition takes only one perspective and so has an inherent bias in its recounting. In this case, Tamara Chalabi a Lebanese-Iraqi, daughter of Ahmad Chalabi, one of the sources of perhaps questionable intelligence that led to the the American invasion in Iraq, writes a heartfelt and moving history of her family, their life in Iraq, and their subsequent exile from the country they loved.Starting back in the early nineteen-teens, Chalabi opens the multi-generational tale of her influential and politically important family by introducing her great-grandfather, grandfather Hadi, and soon-to-be grandmother Bibi. She weaves the external happenings in the area that is soon to become the country of Iraq with the major personal events occurring in her wealthy family. Using the memories of her elderly relatives and what she remembers from her formidable grandmother, she constructs a tale of an elite family, political insiders despite their Shi'a religious identification in a country ruled by the Sunni, a family whose personal history is inextricably intertwined with the complex history of this troubled Middle Eastern country from its time as a part of the Ottoman Empire to its birth as an independent country mentored by the British and on through to its recent turbulent and violent history under Saddam Hussein and beyond.This is neither dry history nor completely undocumented family memoir. Chalabi's family held governmental positions in most incarnations of Iraq's government until the coup d'etat that resulted in the deaths of everyone in the royal family. The men in the family earned immense wealth and had the ears of those who held the reins of power. The women, whose lives were more proscribed due to their religious beliefs and cultural mores, ruled the domestic sphere and contributed to their husbands' successes, especially Chalabi's diminutive, whirlwind grandmother Bibi who is a major presence throughout the bulk of the story. The bulk of the tale centers around the unrest and turmoil of the first half of the twentieth century around Bhagdad, laying the groundwork and explaining the reasons that the situation today exists. Chalabi tries to be evenhanded in her criticisms of the West's dealings in the area but there are times when her anger towards Britain and the US seeps through. The weaving of the personal, the political and their extreme interconnectedness is done quite well, keeping the reader's attention through each narrative shift. The end of the book and the current lives of the Chalabis, especially Tamara's father Ahmad, feels much more rushed than the rest of the story though. It is possible to feel the nostalgia and yearning for a vanished time and place when Chalabi writes of the older generations but the feelings of exile are less complete when she tackles her own and her cousins' similar but confused feelings. And perhaps this would always hold true of a generation not born in country but it is a marked contrast and a definite weakness compared to the strength of feeling of previous generations. A look into a misunderstood area of the world through the eyes of one of its own, although certainly not an unbiased telling, an insightful one indeed.