Ali

The Iraqi

By: Joshua Sabey, Ali Alsamar

Narrated by: Colin Sherif Ghannam

Every book is an invitation to a journey. Not all journeys are worth the time, though. This book, Ali, by Joshua Sabey and Ali Alsamar, offers a journey worth taking—actually many journeys, including stories from the Qur’an and the Bible, family lore (from two families), and ancient glimpses into the human struggle through another Iraq's adventures: Sinbad.

This is a bi-cultural Bildungsroman novel, where the semi-fictionalized protagonists, Paul and Ali, are working through their relationships to their cultures, their faiths, their families, and each other.

©2023 Joshua Sabey (P)2023 Joshua Sabey

Critic reviews

"Josh Sabey’s Ali is a masterful depiction of friendship and faith, tradition and culture, and the very real power of storytelling itself. It brilliantly shows what it means to call someone a friend and a brother. And what it means to truly share yourself with that person, to learn from them, to depend on them. It is a remarkable portrait of love and empathy and grace." (Stephen Tuttle, professor and author)

Very humbling perspective of a pioneer

I loved listening to this story and learning about the incredible and tragic journey of Ali and the families he was a part of. I appreciated the thought and the perspective of mythical stories ,which I was not familiar with, intertwining to show a relatable individual who was given a potentially dangerous opportunity and what came from his pioneering journey.