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The Blurb On The Back:
On the third day of Ramadan, the village wakes to find the severed heads of nine of its sons stacked in banana crates by the bus stop.
One of them belonged to one of the most wanted men in Iraq, known to his friends as Ibrahim the Fated.
How did this good and humble man earn the enmity of so many? What did he do to deserve such a death?
The answer lies in his lifelong friendship with Abdullah Kafka and Tariq the Befuddled, who each have their own remarkable stories to tell.
It lies on the scarred, irradiated battlefields of the Gulf War and in the ashes of a revolution strangled in its cradle.
It lies in the steadfast love of his wife and the festering scorn of his daughter.
And, above all, it lies behind the locked gates of The President’s Gardens, buried alongside the countless victims of a pitiless reign of terror.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
First published in 2013 and long listed for the I.P.A.F (the Arabic Booker) Muhsin Al-Ramli’s literary novel (translated from Arabic by Luke Leafgren) is a dreamy, sorrowful lament on Iraq’s tragic history as seen through the prism of male friendship as it’s battered by the demands of village tradition, war and male rivalry but there’s a lack of strong female characters and the abrupt ending was too open-ended for my taste.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
One of them belonged to one of the most wanted men in Iraq, known to his friends as Ibrahim the Fated.
How did this good and humble man earn the enmity of so many? What did he do to deserve such a death?
The answer lies in his lifelong friendship with Abdullah Kafka and Tariq the Befuddled, who each have their own remarkable stories to tell.
It lies on the scarred, irradiated battlefields of the Gulf War and in the ashes of a revolution strangled in its cradle.
It lies in the steadfast love of his wife and the festering scorn of his daughter.
And, above all, it lies behind the locked gates of The President’s Gardens, buried alongside the countless victims of a pitiless reign of terror.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
First published in 2013 and long listed for the I.P.A.F (the Arabic Booker) Muhsin Al-Ramli’s literary novel (translated from Arabic by Luke Leafgren) is a dreamy, sorrowful lament on Iraq’s tragic history as seen through the prism of male friendship as it’s battered by the demands of village tradition, war and male rivalry but there’s a lack of strong female characters and the abrupt ending was too open-ended for my taste.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
