Samuel Shimon [ United Kingdom, Iraq ]

Samuel Shimon was born into a very poor Assyrian Christian family in Al-Habbaniyah, Iraq in 1956. In 1979 the passionate lover of film left his country with the goal of becoming a director in Hollywood. After stops in Damascus, Beirut, Nicosia, Cairo and Tunis, where he worked mostly with a false passport as a copywriter and journalist for the Palestinian liberation movement PLO, he went to Paris in 1985. In the French capital he lived for almost ten years as a homeless man on the street, getting to know the Parisian bohemians and the resident circle of Arab artists and intellectuals. He tried out a number of odd jobs, including transcribing for the Syrian poet Adonis who was also living in Paris, before he finally moved to London in 1996.
Over the years becoming an expert on Arabic literature, in 1998 Shimon founded the independent magazine »Banipal« in the British capital, along with his wife Margaret Obank, which he still publishes with her. It is released three times a year as a forum for modern Arabic literature, with poetry, short stories and excerpts from novels published in English translation. Shimon also continues to distinguish himself as a short story writer and editor of anthologies of Arabic lyrical poetry. In 2003 he established the influential online Arabic cultural journal »Kikah« (www.kikah.com), which acts as an independent platform for a free exchange of ideas and that at its centre publishes online new literary works from the Arabic-speaking world. Shimon celebrated his greatest success as an author in 2005 with his début novel »An Iraqi in Paris«. The book was highly praised by critics and compared to the works of Henry Miller, »the Arabic answer to ›Tropic of Cancer‹«, according to the »Independent«. The last publication from Shimon as an editor was the anthology »Beirut 2009« (2010), in which he assembled works by 39 young Arab authors who were the winners of the Hay Festival international project. In January 2012 his second novel, »The Militant Lingerie«, will be published. It does not bother him that his initial goal of becoming a Hollywood filmmaker is now a distant vision: »How can I complain about a life that was ultimately one hundred percent Hollywood?« Samuel Shimon lives and works in London.