The Sirens of Baghdad
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5.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
The third novel in Yasmina Khadra's bestselling trilogy about Islamic fundamentalism has the most compelling backdrop of any of his novels: Iraq in the wake of the American invasion.
A young Iraqi student, unable to attend college because of the war, sees American soldiers leave a trail of humiliation and grief in his small village. Bent on revenge, he flees to the chaotic streets of Baghdad where insurgents soon realize they can make use of his anger. Eventually he is groomed for a secret terrorist mission meant to dwarf the attacks of September 11th, only to find himself struggling with moral qualms. The Sirens of Baghdad is a powerful look at the effects of violence on ordinary people, showing what can turn a decent human being into a weapon, and how the good in human nature can resist.
“Compelling. . . . Khadra brings us deep into the hearts and minds of people living in unspeakable mental anguish.” —Los Angeles Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Khadra's latest political thriller set in the Middle East couldn't be more timely. The versatile Khadra brings the reader inside the mind of an unnamed terrorist-to-be, an Iraqi Bedouin, radicalized by witnessing the death of innocents and the humiliation of the civilian population by the American forces in the Second Gulf War. Without apologizing for the carnage caused by either side in the conflict, the author, a former officer in the Algerian army, manages to make the thoughts of a suicide bomber accessible to a Western readership, even as the scope of the terrorist's intended target, meant to dwarf 9/11 in its impact, and the method's plausibility will send a shiver down the spine of most readers. Despite the essential bleakness of the book's themes, Khadra (The Swallows of Kabul; The Attack) manages to inject a note of hope toward the end, without betraying his powerful message of how the occupation of Iraq has brutalized both the Iraqis and the Americans.
