Late for Tea at the Deer Palace: The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family

“It’s an admirable endeavour to have Iraq addressed by someone who is in so many ways able to approach it from two worlds. . . . Tamara Chalabi has the stuff, in every sense, that is needful to undertake this.” —Christopher Hitchens

In the tradition of Jung Chang’s Wild Swans and Bhutto Benazir’s Reconciliation comes Tamara Chalabi’s unique memoir of returning to her family’s homeland, Iraq. In this epic story of one daughter’s journey through the annals of her family’s tumultuous history, Chalabi’s powerful voice and piercing vision illuminate her country and its people as never before.
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For Tamara Chalabi, Iraq is more than a country of war and controversy; it is a place of poignant memory. For much of the twentieth century, the Chalabis were among the most influential families in Iraq. In the 1920s they were at the forefront of their country's awakening to modernity, and they played an integral part in the establishment of its monarchy. As courtiers, politicians, businessmen, rebels, merchants, and scholars, the Chalabis enjoyed vast privilege until the end of the 1950s, when they were forced to flee to the land of exile, myth, and imagination, where their beloved homeland took on the quality of a phantom country. In between came rebellions, foreign interventions, and the transformative development of oil wealth.

But in 2003, after a lifetime of exile, Tamara arrived in Baghdad just ten days after the city's fall, in the company of her father, Ahmad Chalabi, a leading opposition figure against the Saddam regime. Late for Tea at the Deer Palace chronicles a daughter's return to a homeland she'd known only through stories and her own imagination. As she investigates four generations of her family's history, Tamara offers a rich portrait of Middle Eastern family life and a provocative look at a lost Iraq. The story is populated by an array of unforgettable characters, among them Tamara's great-grandfather Abdul Hussein Chalabi, who as a member of the Ottoman parliament witnessed the end of the empire in Baghdad and the birth of the modern Iraqi state at the hands of the British; her grandfather Abdul Hadi Chalabi, who became one of the wealthiest men in Iraq and had strong ties with the British during World War II; and her grandmother Bibi, a grande dame who presided over Iraq's social and political life during Baghdad's 1920s and '30s heyday as the Paris of the Middle East.

At once intimate and magisterial, Late for Tea at the Deer Palace vividly captures the rich, overlooked history of a country that has been uprooted by war and a family that has persevered by never forgetting its dreams or its past.

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“It’s an admirable endeavour to have Iraq addressed by someone who is in so many ways able to approach it from two worlds. . . . Tamara Chalabi has the stuff, in every sense, that is needful to undertake this.” - Christopher Hitchens

“A charming memoir. . . . Chalabi’s characters, above all her indomitable grandmother Bibi, are powerfully drawn. . . . It takes a lot of skill to interweave the history of a nation with that of a family and it is a tribute to Chalabi that Late for Tea at the Deer Palace is such an accomplished book. It is a moving memoir of a prominent family surviving the occasionally terrifying challenges of one of the world’s most troubled and turbulent countries.” - Justin Marozzi, Literary Review

“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 twentieth century. . . A meditation on exile, a moving family portrait, thoughtful and well researched, Late for Tea at the Deer Palace gives Iraq, as much as the Chalabi family, its story. - Jason Goodwin, The Spectator

“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, The Daily Telegraph (London)

“A gripping and well-told saga. . . . An eye-opening account of the family’s long history at the center of Iraq’s royal court.” - The Nation

“An absorbing social history of Iraq. . . . A work of exile literature, beautifully written, rich with human detail as only personal family histories can be.” - The New York Times Book Review

“One small way to rebuild a country after war may be to hold a picture of its true beauty, which is what Chalabi does.” - The Los Angeles Times

“A sweeping, enchanting memoir . . . Late for Tea at the Deer Palace deftly combines elements of history and memoir, but shines most when the author lets the characters’ stories tell the history of Iraq.” - The Associated Press

“Fascinating. . . . Chalabi is a natural storyteller. . . . There are absorbing vignettes that describe everyday life in Iraqi high society as it has never before appeared in English. . . . An often beautiful and vivid but tragically belated book.” - Ann Marlowe, The Daily

“Chalabi reconstructs her family’s past in novelistic scenes that demonstrate impressive scholarship.” - The New Yorker