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Rodaan Al Galidi is a poet and writer. Born in Iraq and trained as a civil engineer, he has lived in the Netherlands since 1998. As an undocumented asylum seeker he did not have the right to attend language classes, so he taught himself to read and write Dutch. His novel De autist en de postduif (""The Autist and the Carrier Pigeon"") won the European Union Prize for Literature in 2011-the same year he failed his Dutch citizenship course. The Leash and the Ball is Al Galidi's latest novel. His previous book, Two Blankets, Three Sheets, is also published by World Editions. Both titles are bestsellers in the Netherlands. Jonathan Reeder, a native of New York and longtime resident of Amsterdam, enjoys a dual career as a literary translator and performing musician. Alongside his work as a professional bassoonist he translates opera libretti and essays on classical music, as well as contemporary Dutch fiction by authors including Christine Otten, Marjolijn van Heemstra, and A. F. T. van der Heijden. Other notable translations include Rivers and The Pelican by Martin Michael Driessen, The Lonely Funeral by Maarten Inghels and F. Starik, and Rodaan Al Galidi's previous work, Two Blankets, Three Sheets. Other World Editions titles translated by Reeder are The Last Poets by Christine Otten and Sleepless Summer by Bram Dehouck.
""The Leash and the Ball is forthright in its critique of the Iraqi world that Samir has left behind, but the book is equally clear-eyed about the casual assumptions and lazy stereotypes that constantly obscure the full human complexity of refugees and asylum seekers. Al Galidi's precise, ironic and tender voice is a gift to literature and a powerful antidote to the hate speech of the exterminating angels of our own age."" --Irish Times ""The chasm is there. But Samir doesn't waste time complaining about it--he does everything in his power to get closer, both to Leda and to the Netherlands. That's what makes this novel so digestible and so painful at the same time; it's more of a comedy of manners about someone trying to integrate than an indictment of the impossibility of ever succeeding at that, which makes the criticism inherent in the novel hit all the harder."" --NRC Handelsblad ""Phenomenal.""--RICK NIEMANN, Jinek ""Witty, sad, and beautiful.""--MAARTEN 'T HART ""A book that really touches you.""--DWDD ""If Al Galidi shows anything about the many characters in this riveting novel, it is that everyone lives in a mix of different cultures in their own way, whether you happen to come from the same country or city, or from the other side of the world."" --Tzum ""The Leash and the Ball is at least as poignant as Two Blankets, Three Sheets. It, too, can be hilarious, though there's always that disturbing undertone."" --De Leesclub van Alles blog Praise for Two Blankets, Three Sheets ""A blunt and surprisingly humorous peek at an aspect of global displacement that remains largely hidden from public view."" --Kirkus Reviews ""An absolute treat. Al Galidi has an eye for the absurd. It's all the more striking because of the lightness of the telling."" --Irish Times ""No other book I have read makes the soul-destroying effects of European asylum procedures more vividly clear than this one."" --Foreign Affairs ""Ably translated into English for an American readership by Jonathan Reeder, Two Blankets, Three Sheets is a deftly written and engaging novel that showcases author Rodaan Al Galidi's exceptionally effective narrative storytelling style."" --Midwest Book Review ""At once funny and bleak, this novel by the Iraq-born Dutch novelist draws on his personal experiences to expose the cruel and often absurd procedural challenges that immigrants must endure. It's an engrossing and exasperating novel. Two Blankets, Three Sheets is a tale of belonging and what it means to be human in a world that deems people less important than government protocols."" --Words Without Borders ""Two Blankets, Three Sheets does for the beleaguered political asylum seeker stuck in legal limbo what Joseph Heller's Catch-22> did for the hapless soldier trapped in a military at war. Translated from the Dutch into nimble and conversational English by Jonathan Reeder. It is a tale for and of our time."" --Los Angeles Review of Books ""This frank and poetic account of a life in limbo yields a story with universal power that transcends borders and cultures, with more than a touch of Catch-22's black humor.""--Shelf Awareness ""Two Blankets, Three Sheets infuses tedious sufferings with drama, humour and life: the agony of waiting, the cruelty and pettiness of bureaucracy. It makes visceral the shameful ways we misuse our small powers over each other. I've never read a book that better illustrates the human cost of the European asylum systems. This vital, eye-opening work is essential to our collective education, as a history, as a call to action, bringing one person's suffering vividly to life in the imagination of strangers."" --DINA NAYERI, author of The Ungrateful Refugee, for The Guardian ""Two Blankets, Three Sheets is an interesting, rich novel on fear, insecurity, arbitrariness and hopelessness."" --GUUS BAUER, author of Bird Boy ""This is an unnerving, ironical book about how lives are grinded down by endlessly stretched procedures."" --Leeuwarder Courant ""Al Galidi writes this novel based on his own experiences, but he manages to cover that up so well with his fluent writing style, a sense of humor and an absence of resentment. A real feat in his case. The lighthearted way in which he writes about tragic experiences makes this a very impactful book.""--KRISTIEN HEMMERECHTS, author of The Woman Who Fed the Dogs ""Book of the month? Book of the year! Rodaan Al Galidi has been writing beautiful books for years, but this is his absolute masterpiece. Loose, light, and humoristic, and precisely for these reasons the book hits home. Don't be mistaken: stylistically, too, this book is a testament to his mastery.""--Bookseller Van Rossum ""Don't look any further, buy this book!""--Bookseller Hijman Ongerijmd ""The dilemma of the desire for survival set against one's moral compass brings to mind George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London; Samir's attempts to make the best of his protracted detention has much in common with the plight of the stateless Tom Hanks in Steven Spielberg's film The Terminal."" --Dutch Foundation for Literature ""For all its heavy themes―the tragedy of miscommunication, loss of identity and meaning of life, humiliation, and the incapacity to truly connect―it is also a very light and humorous book."" --Literair Nederland ""A challenging portrait of Dutch hospitality. Absolutely recommended."" --The Correspondent ""You can write emails about refugees until you're blue in the face, but you can also, thanks to the unique power of literature, spend a few hours inside the mind and soul of one of them. By reading this tragicomic masterpiece. It will do you good."" --De Limburger ""'The asylum center, ' Al Galidi writes, 'is a grave where the time of a few hundred people is buried.' For this grave he has erected a memorable monument that functions as both a complaint and a mirror. And I, for one, was ashamed of what I saw in it.""--TOMMY WIERINGA, author of Joe Speedboat ""Essential reading."" --Trouw ""A stunning novel about the experiences of a refugee in a heartless regime: polder-bureaucracy thick as mud. Al Galidi holds up a mirror to us. A mirror that we should all look into.""--ADRIAAN VAN DIS ""Two Blankets, Three Sheets is a valuable and rich novel about fear, uncertainty, arbitrariness, and hopelessness, written by someone who was, thankfully, able to use his new language as a lifebuoy."" --Tzum
