After twenty-three years of exile, Harun returns to his hometown of Amaria in Iraq. Among the ruins left by the war, he discovers an inscription he left as a child while searching for his own past: "The Angel of the South." This was the name he gave to the idol of his youth, a Jewish girl who embodied for him the golden age when ethnicities and religions lived together peacefully. In this and countless other stories, Najem Wali's historically profound and fairy-tale-like novel brings to light the dramatic past of war, dictatorship, but also longing and hope of a once multicultural city.