Late for Tea at the Deer Palace

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.

'In this absorbing book [Chalabi] has wrapped up much that is important in Iraq's history in the story of her own family's development through the 20th century!She does so beautifully, in a complex family memoir attuned to the beats of Iraqi history!Chalabi's aim is to reclaim for her readers a country that war and news have reduced to "a desert of tanks, screaming women and barefoot children". She succeeds: a meditation on exile, a moving family portrait, thoughtful and well-researched, "Late for Tea" gives Iraq, as much as the Chalabi family, its story.' Jason Goodwin, Spectator 'Delicate and intricately wrought!there is a sense of poignancy and acute longing for an Iraq that is all but unrecognisable today' Traveller 'Tamara's tale is not about WMDs or insurgents. It 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!"Late for Tea at the Deer Palace" has a whimsical, magical quality' Janine di Giovani, Telegraph 'Chalabi describes a litany of privilege through the 1930s and 1940s: picnics on islands in the Tigris, tea parties with royal princesses, card games, matchmaking and gossip!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' Wendell Steavenson, Sunday Times

'In this absorbing book [Chalabi] has wrapped up much that is important in Iraq's history in the story of her own family's development through the 20th century...She does so beautifully, in a complex family memoir attuned to the beats of Iraqi history...Chalabi's aim is to reclaim for her readers a country that war and news have reduced to "a desert of tanks, screaming women and barefoot children". She succeeds: a meditation on exile, a moving family portrait, thoughtful and well-researched, "Late for Tea" gives Iraq, as much as the Chalabi family, its story.' Jason Goodwin, Spectator

'Delicate and intricately wrought...there is a sense of poignancy and acute longing for an Iraq that is all but unrecognisable today' Traveller

'Tamara's tale is not about WMDs or insurgents. It 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..."Late for Tea at the Deer Palace" has a whimsical, magical quality' Janine di Giovani, Telegraph

'Chalabi describes a litany of privilege through the 1930s and 1940s: picnics on islands in the Tigris, tea parties with royal princesses, card games, matchmaking and gossip...From the sweet buffalo cream her great-grandfather adores to the dancing girls in the risqué new cafes her grandfather frequents, the richness of an "expired epoch" long past is lovingly rendered' Wendell Steavenson, Sunday Times