Sinan Antoon (Arabic: سنان أنطون, Born in Baghdad in 1967)[1] is a well-known Iraqi poet, novelist, scholar and translator. He writes in both Arabic and English and his works have been translated into many languages. He was also featured in the film About Baghdad and Voices in Wartime.
Antoon was born in Baghdad to an Iraqi father and American mother.[2] He studied English literature at Baghdad University and graduated in 1990 with honors.
After the 1991 Gulf War, he emigrated to the United States. He earned an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University and a PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Harvard University. His works include poetry in Arabic and English (some collected in Baghdad Blues)[3] and two novels, the first of which; I'jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody[4] received critical acclaim in the Arab world when it appeared in the original Arabic in 2003. The literary editor of the pan-Arab al-Hayat described it as "one of the most important Iraqi and Arab novels published in recent years. . . an Iraqi novel par excellence." I`jaam was translated into German (Lenos), Norwegian (LPS), Italian (Feltrinelli), and Portuguese (Globo).
Antoon's second novel "Wahdaha Shajarat al-Rumman" (The Pomegranate Alone) was published in Beirut in 2010. It is about a family of Shi`ite body washers living near the famous shrine of al-Kazim in Baghdad. The son rebels against the father and decides to study art and become an artist, but war and economic pressures force him to inherit the profession he loathed. Through the narrator's encounters with the death visited by the sectarian civil war, we get a glimpse of daily life in Iraq after the occupation. The Iraqi critic described it as "The panorama of Iraq's tragedies." Antoon published two collections of poetry in Arabic. "Mawshur Muballal bil-Huroob ( A Prism; Wet with Wars) (Cairo:Mirit, 2003) and "Laylun Wahid fi KUll al-Mudun (One Night in All Cities) (Beirut: Dar al-Jamal, 2010). Antoon is also a literary translator. His translations of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish were nominated for the PEN Translation Prize in 2004. His translations appear in Banipal, on whose editorial board he serves. He translated Mahmoud Darwish's In the Presence of Absence (New York: Archipelago, 2011). Antoon has also directed and co-produced two plays at Middlebury College both in 1998 and 1999; The King is the King and The Elephant. He returned to Baghdad in July 2003 to co-direct and co-produce the documentary "About Baghdad" about the lives of Iraqis in post-Saddam occupied Iraq. Antoon taught Arabic literature at Dartmouth College in 2003-2005. He is now an assistant professor at New York University.
He is co-founder and co-editor of the e-zine Jadaliyya. He has appeared on the Charlie Rose Show and al-Jazeera English, as well as many radio shows in the US. He is published in The Nation, The New York Times, Middle East Report, al-Ahram Weekly, Journal of Palestine Studies, Ploughshares, The Massachusetts Review among others.