Review Quote
"Graceful and resonant . . . A personal undertaking for a son who admits he never understood his unassuming, penny-pinching immigrant father, a man who spent three decades obsessively cataloging the words of his moribund mother tongue. Sabar once looked at his father with shame, scornful of the alien who still bore scars on his back from childhood bloodlettings. This book, he writes, is a chance to make amends"– New York Times Sunday Book Review
"If Ariel Sabar's My Father's Paradise were only about his father's life, it would be a remarkable enough story about the psychic costs of immigration. But Sabar's family history turns out to be more than the chronicle of one man's efforts to retain something of his homeland in new surroundings. It's also a moving story about the near-death of an ancient language and the tiny flicker of life that remains in it. . . . The chapters describing Yona's budding success as a linguist are thrilling."– Washington Post Book World
"A wonderful, enlightening journey, a voyage with the power to move readers deeply even as it stretches across differences of culture, family, and memory." – Christian Science Monitor
A "remarkable new memoir" – Philadelphia Inquirer
"Be forewarned: you will lose sleep over this book. . . . [Sabar] mesmerizes with the very first sentences. . . . Unlike many memoirs flooding the book market these days, My Father’s Paradise is both unique and universal.” – Roanoke (Va.) Times
A "thoughtful, touching book. . . . A never-ending parade of colorful characters . . .I could not read quickly enough as the Sabars worked to resurrect the past." – Elle magazine, Readers' Prize selection, October 2008
"Written with a reporter's flair for people and places . . . Recommended." – Library Journal
"A sensitive exploration . . . [Sabar's grandmother] emerges as a quiet heroine." – BookPage
"With the novelistic skill of a Levantine storyteller . . . Sabar explores the conflicting demands of love and tradition, the burdens and blessings of an ancient culture encountering the 21st century. A well-researched text falling somewhere between journalism and memoir, sustained by Mesopotamian imagination.” – Kirkus Reviews
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