May 24, 2012
Growing up in materialistic 1980s Los Angeles, Ariel Sabar wanted nothing to do with his father. Yona Sabar was an esteemed professor at UCLA and is one of the world’s foremost experts on the ancient language of Aramaic. But Ariel saw him as a stone-age relic, a walking fashion tragedy who couldn’t get his clothes to match and refused to see a barber about his out-of-control, Einstein-like hair. Then Ariel had his own son, and everything changed. In his talk, Ariel will weave the remarkable story of the Kurdish Jews and their Aramaic tongue with the moving tale of how a consummate California kid came to write a book about his family’s Kurdish roots. The book, My Father’s Paradise, won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography.
Ariel Sabar's debut book, My Father's Paradise, won the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His second book, Heart of the City, was called a "beguiling romp" (New York Times) and an "engaging, moving and lively read" (Toronto Star). He is an award-winning former staff writer for the Baltimore Sun and covered the 2008 presidential campaigns for the Christian Science Monitor. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Boston Globe, Washington Monthly, Mother Jones, Washingtonian Magazine, and other publications. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Brown University and has lectured on creative writing Brown, The University of Maryland-College Park, The George Washington University, and Georgetown.