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Saturday, February 7, 2015

A Lens Through Saddam Hussein Books

By Ines Flores


Saddam Hussein is an Iraqi leader born in 1937 who became president in 1979. He is remembered for strengthening the oil industry in Iraq as well as its military. To maintain power, he often used brutal measures that eventually cost him his life at the hands of Iraqi government. In 2006, he was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity that he was executed for in Dec 2006. What most people do not know about him is that he was an author of several Saddam Hussein books.

There is a total of four books and several poems published by Saddam. All his work was anonymously published under the pen name-the author. The list of his works includes Men and City, Begone, Demons, Zabibah and the King and The Fortified Castle. Some of his works found their way into the Iraqi schools curriculum. After his death, most of them became best sellers.

Zabibah and the King is a romance novel written by Saddam Hussein and published anonymously in 2000. The characters include Arab, the protagonist, Zabibah, Zabibahs husband, Hezkel, Shamil and Nuri Chalabi. Although the novel has a romantic theme, it is intended to be as an allegory with the protagonist being Hussein. Zabibah is a poor woman unhappily married who the Arab seems to like. She represents the people of Iraq.

According to the novel, the husband to Zabibah is unloving and cruel. The husband is mean to be an allegory to the United States. When he rapes Zabibah, it is a metaphor for the invasion of Iraq. Other characters represent the relationship with Israel, Jews and other the countries which the author perceives to be its enemies. This novel managed to sell over a million copies and its royalties shared among charities.

Men and the City is the third book authored by Hussein. It was published in 2002 and its style is a little bit different from the styles of the rest of these books. Men and the City is more of an autobiography telling the story of rulers grandfather against the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. It is believed that the story was ghostwritten but others claim that there is evidence to disprove this.

The third novel by Hussein is the Fortified Castle. Like almost all the others, its an allegory as well as a political metaphor. It was published in the year 2001 and tells the story of a delayed wedding. The protagonist is an Iraq war hero called Sabah getting married to a Kurdish girl. The war hero participated in the significant Iran-Iraq war and was left wounded.

The fourth and last novel by Saddam is Begone, Demons that is a loose translation of Get out of here, Cursed You! Written in 2003, it is an anticipation of the 2003 Iraq war. It was published in 2006 in Tokyo by a Japanese publisher. It is a work of fiction but with political metaphor. It was initially in Japanese and later translated to Turkish.

The four books written by Saddam Hussein are very significant to him, his era and Iraq. They were all authored at a time when his political career had begun to die. Also, it represents a troubling period for him and Iraq citizens. Lastly, they are a demonstration of hope, strength and a bit of ignorance for a person who considered himself a hero.




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