Hiner Saleem

Iraq (Kurdistan)

Reviewers aren't clear whether this is fiction or memoir. It appears to be best treated as "fictionalized memoir." Azad Selim is a young boy in Iraqi Kurdistan. As the Baathist regime gains power, his community's life becomes increasingly miserable and its insurgency increases. The book is interesting but choppy and artless, a story without a plot. It is useful for its portrait of Kurdish villages and concerns, and to show U.S. readers a different side of Iraq's conflicts. It is also oddly refreshing to read a book from someone under Iraqi authority who (with his community) applauds Saddam Hussein's overthrow.
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