The Demonic Comedy: Some Detours in the Baghdad of Saddam Hussein Book

A filmmaker and author of, among other books, the well-received India travelogue Empire of the Soul, Paul William Roberts writes as if he were Outside magazine's British correspondent, filtering extravagant irony through a bottle of Scotch. This could be distracting in a book about a place like Iraq; sometimes, indeed, his long-range metaphors stray their course. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine what besides laughter might get a person through the absurdities of everyday life in Baghdad, where a "political machine increasingly bent on shaping reality in its own image" has named everything after Saddam Hussein, and erected monstrous public memorials in its wake. "There's not much that is secret about Iraq's secret police, the feared Mukhabarat," Roberts writes. "Its officers all have moustaches as much like Saddam's luxuriant broom of a growth as they can manage (and most Iraqi men can manage a reasonably prodigious facsimile)." Shifting uneasily beneath the humor, though, lies the dark heart of the story, and it becomes darker as the book continues, revealing the soullessness of government leaders, the abuse of the Iraqi people, and, of course, the unsavory details of Western involvement in that country's history. The humor Roberts brings to the book turns out to be a necessary counterweight to tragedy. --Maria DolanRead More