Set in 2010, Hail Mary unfolds over 24 hours in Baghdad. The events of the novel take place around two characters from an Iraqi Christian family, drawn together under the same roof by the chaos in the country. Youssef is an elderly man who is alone. He refuses to emigrate and le…
The Long Way Back tells the story of four generations of the same family living in an old house in the Bab al-Shaykh area of Baghdad. Through exquisite layering of the overlapping worlds of the characters, their private conflicts and passions are set against the wider drama of e…
No journalist is better situated to reckon with the psychology of war than David Finkel. In The Good Soldiers, his bestselling account from the front lines of Baghdad, Finkel shadowed the men of a US infantry battalion as they carried out a gruelling 15-month tour that changed a…
In Baghdad, an enormous monument nearly twice the size of the Arc de Triomphe towers over the city. Two huge forearms emerge from the ground, clutching two swords that clash overhead. Those arms are enlarged casts of those of Saddam Hussein, showing every bump and follicle. The …
The Monument is a study of the interplay between art and politics -- of how culture, normally an unquestioned good, can play into the hands of power with devastating effects. Kanan Makiya uses the culture invented by Saddam Hussein as a window into the nature of totalitarianism …
The book sheds new light on the revolutionary influence of Eliot's poetry on the free verse movement in Iraq and Lebanon, especially on the mythical poets: Al-Sayyab, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Yusuf Al-Khal, Khalil Hawi and Adonis known as the Tammuzi Poets. The writer is one of Elio…
