Woman Of The Flask

The Woman of the Flask is a most original novel'a blend of grim realism and fantasy. Two Iraqi exiles reach Switzerland, having escaped from Saddam's Iraq. One of them, Adam, has brought with him an old flask found among the possessions of his late father who came from the Marshlands of southern Iraq. He polishes it and opens it: a fabulously beautiful nubile young woman appears. She has, it emerges, been the lover of his ancestors going back five thousand years. The novel weaves together the threads of her memories of Adam's ancestors, his life today and his work as a computer programmer, his fellow exile, his Swiss wife, and his coping with the woman of the flask. She is not happy with immortality, and Adam and his friend confront both a European bureaucracy and an alternative world of magic and fantasy. The reader is swept along by a dizzyingly compelling narrative, unsure where the story is going but fascinated by the journey.Matar, Salim is the author of 'Woman Of The Flask ', published 2005 under ISBN 9789774248986 and ISBN 9774248988.