Friday, March 6, 2015

A Summary Of Saddam Hussein Books

By Leslie Ball


Saddam Hussein served as the president of Iraq between July 16th 1979 and 9th April of 2003. He was executed by hanging on December 30th 2006 in Green Zone Bagdad. By the time of his death, he had written four novels and several poems. None of the Saddam Hussein books ever came in his real name. He used a pseudo name He Who Wrote It to publish all his works.

CIA recons that Zabibah and the King, released in 2000 was authored by Saddam with the assistance of ghost writers. The novel is set in medieval Iraq and features a commoner girl called Zabibah. She is caught in a love web between her and the king who is was a mighty ruler of old day Iraq.

Zabibah is married to a rapist and cruel husband. The setting is Tikrit somewhere in the 7th or 8th century. Saddam was interestingly born in Tikrit. A new edition of the book was released in 2004, having been edited by Lawrence Robert. There was a rumor that the movie where Sacha Baron Cohen starred was adapted from this story but it turned out not to be true.

The Fortified Castle is a 713 pages novel that was released in 2001. It is an allegory of a delayed wedding of a hero of the Iraq-Iran war. The hero is supposed to get married to a Kurdish girl. It features three main characters. Two of them are brothers named Mahmud and Sabah. They come from the rural western bank of Tigris River and are born of a farming family. The third character is Shatrin, a lady from Suleimaniya.

The three main actors in The Fortified Castle plot meet while attending University of Baghdad. Sabah has fought in the Iraq-Iran war, gotten wounded and captured as a war slave. His heroism lies in his escape and ability to take several of his friends during the dash to freedom.

The Fortified Castle rallies Iraqis into uniting as a nation to safeguard gains made during war. This call is captured in the assertion by the mother of Sabah who is fighting off pressure to share property. In her opinion, she cannot divide the property since it is too valuable to be assigned monetary value. The property should only go to individuals who gave their blood in war. He also wrote a book by the name Men and the City but it did not receive as much attention.

Begone Demons is loosely translated as Get Out You Damned. The book is said to have been completed a day before US invasion. It captures the theory of Zionist-Christian conspiracy to fight and oppress Muslims and Arabs. The story appears to be a reference to the destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11th. The naming of characters is suggestive of the Muslim-Christian tussle.

Toluma Shoten Publishing released a version of Begone Demons in 2006 in Tokyo Japan under the title Devils Dance. The Turkish translation was the work of Humam Khalil. When Raghad wanted to print and release a hundred thousand copies of the book in Jordan, the government declined. This means that the title never got to be translated or released in any other language.




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