The ticket price is redeemable towards a copy of Notes From a Lost Country on the night.

Date: Tuesday, 30th of June

Location: Round Table Books CIC, 10-11 Granville Arcade, Coldharbour Lane, SW9 8PR (next to Honest Burger)

Time: 18:30 - 20:00

The ticket price is redeemable towards a copy of Notes From a Lost Country on the night.

Join the author of Notes From a Lost Country, Sinan Atoon. He will be in conversation with Hasan Abdulrazzak

‘A haunting story of two men — one desperate to remember, the other to forget. In exploring the cost of erasing one’s past, Antoon reveals the deep fractures of exile and identity.’

Sami, a retired doctor, lives with his son and grandchildren in Brooklyn. But Sami keeps losing his way. Every day he sinks deeper into dementia and old memories of life in Iraq before the war. Omar arrives in the US with a fake identity and no friends or family. Having run away from the Iraqi army, he has been branded a deserter and his ear brutally cut off. Omar carries this mark of shame with him and refuses to talk about the past.

He dreams of getting his ear, and his dignity, back. When their paths cross, at least one of them knows that they have met before – if only he could remember where. Exploring the aftermath of war and how the past haunts new beginnings, Notes from a Lost Country creates a moving portrait of life in exile.

Sinan Antoon is an Iraqi poet, novelist, translator, and scholar. He left Iraq after the 199i Gulf War. He has published two collections of poetry and five novels. His works, translated to seventeen languages, include I`jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody, The Book of Collateral Damage, which was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and The Corpse Washer, which won the 2014 Arab American Book Award and the 2017 Arabic Literature Prize from Lagardère and the Arab World Institute in France. His translation of Ibtisam Azem’s The Book of Disappearance was longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize. He is an associate professor at New York University.

Hassan Abdulrazzak is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His plays include The Special Relationship (Soho Theatre, 2020), And Here I Am (Arcola Theatre, 2017; currently touring internationally), Love, Bombs and Apples (Arcola Theatre, 2016; UK tour; Golden Thread, San Francisco, 2018; Kennedy Center, Washington DC, 2019), The Prophet (Gate Theatre, 2012) and Baghdad Wedding (Soho Theatre, 2007; BBC Radio 3, 2008; Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, 2009; Akvarious Productions, Delhi and Mumbai, 2010).

His two-part radio adaptation, The Yafa Cherry Orchard, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2025 and was nominated for Best Adaptation and Best Actress at the BBC Audio Drama Awards. His short film A Night of Gharam won the Unsolicited Scripts Short Film Grant (2022) and went on to win further awards following its release in 2023.

He is the recipient of the George Devine, Meyer-Whitworth and Pearson Theatre Awards, as well as the Arab British Centre Award for Culture. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Books and refreshments from Round Table’s Bar will be available for purchase on the night.