Isn't it time Mills & Boon gave Saddam a call?

The Times (U.K.) ^ | 06/29/2002 | Ben MacIntyre

[Pokey78]

We all have a novel in us but Saddam Hussein, it turns out, has at least three. In between murdering his own people, shifting from bunker to bunker and defying George W. Bush, the Iraqi dictator has found time to write (or, more likely, dictate) a fictional trilogy.

These works have been devoured with equal eagerness by members of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council and the CIA. Last week all three novels were placed on the compulsory curriculum of every Iraqi school. Qusai, Saddam’s killer son and presumed heir, liked them so much he bought 250,000 copies. Every Iraqi province has been issued with a purchasing quota for his latest work, Men and A City, which was declared to be the best-selling book in Iraqi history, shortly before it was published.

The critical reception in Iraq has been deafening, if a trifle predictable. Here is a representative example from INA, the official Iraqi news agency: “A novel full of living symbols that confidently discloses the personality of its writer, that has the dual advantage in which phrases compete and ideas mate with each other to give birth to passionate love between the writer and his history and the people and the country.” Pity the critics: it’s not easy to type with thumbscrews on.

A stage adaptation of Saddam’s first novel, Zabibah and the King, was recently performed to mark his 65th birthday at the National Theatre in Baghdad. The entire literary elite of Iraq was invited to attend the opening night. Oddly enough, they were all free that night, and clapped very loudly. The book is now being made into a 20-part series for Iraqi television. And yet none of Saddam’s three novels has been reviewed in the TLS or The New York Review of Books. Oprah has read none of them.

Despots have always betrayed themselves in their intellectual posturings. Stalin considered himself a brilliant linguist. Eleni Ceausescu was, she informed her Romanian subjects, one of the world greatest pioneering chemists. Hitler thought Mein Kampf a work of high art. “What an artist dies in me,” declared Nero as he expired, having punished his sycophants for years with interminable readings of his own poetry. Saddam is merely the latest in a long tradition of autocratic literary wannabes.

We know very little about Saddam’s personality. He smokes Cohiba cigars supplied by Castro. He dyes his hair and is too vain to wear spectacles. He had no schooling before the age of eight, but admires Machiavelli and Churchill, and reads poetry, military history and biographies. He drinks Mateus rosé. As CIA psychological profilers have discovered over the years, Saddam is not one to wear his heart on his sleeve. But fiction is, in some senses, disguised autobiography, and Saddam’s novels contain more than the odd clue to this more than odd person. Saddam is ready for textual analysis. Here, then, is the Mother of All Book Reviews.

Zabibah and The King. Published in 2000, this short roman-à-clef was theoretically anonymous, coyly described on the cover as “a novel by its author”. (I bet Joe Klein wishes he had thought of that). But the author’s identity was as blindingly obvious as its allegorical thrust: a handsome king (Saddam) falls in love with a virtuous peasant woman (Iraq) who is brutally raped by her evil estranged husband (the US) on January 17, 1991 — the first day of Operation Desert Storm. The husband is in league with foreign infidels and, inevitably, a rich Jewish merchant called Hasqel who speculates against the national currency.

The sex scenes are rather military — more wham, bam thank you Saddam than chick-lit — but the protagonist is specifically described as introverted and sensitive, and some of the dialogue is intriguing:

The King: “Do the people need strict measures?” Zabibah: “Yes, your majesty. The people need strict measures so that they can feel protected by this strictness.”

The Impregnable Castle. For this page-turner Saddam moves to another enemy, Iran, in a bid to prove that his regime is as impregnable as his prose. The preface gives a flavour: “Here I am, Iraq, the land of prophets. We will only bend before God. Evil be to the cowards and lackeys ...” and so on. It tells the story of a young Iraqi fighter in the late 1980s who is wounded and captured by Iranians, but escapes, returns to Baghdad and marries a beautiful Kurdish woman. The end.

Men and A City is Saddam’s most autobiographical effort so far, Sir Gawain in the No-Fly Zone: “From the heart of pitch black darkness, the suffering of soul and body, and the determination to achieve one’s goals in defiance of tyranny and injustice, a chivalrous and brave knight emerged, beckoning glory to come closer to him ...” Presumably written after September 11, the theme of Jihad against the West is much more pronounced. There are plenty of action scenes, but precious few jokes.

Saddam’s writing is pompous, pedantic propaganda, but it is tempting to see in this rush into print the ultimate hubris of a man who has already declared himself the Anointed One, Direct Descendant of the Prophet, Great Uncle of his people, and whose latest palace is decorated with columns topped with replicas of his own head wearing Saladin’s helmet.

After weapons of mass destruction, Saddam has plainly hit on the weapon of mass-market publishing, and he is churning the novels out at a Barbara Cartland rate. Thus, rather than spending time and effort on trying to capture or kill Saddam in Iraq, Hollywood should simply buy the film rights to Zabibah and the King. Anyone arrogant enough to go in for vanity publishing on this scale will surely be unable to resist turning up for the premiere.

[Billthedrill]

Despots have always betrayed themselves in their intellectual posturings.

"You will purchase a copy of It Takes A Village and you will enjoy it!"

[another cricket]

Even Mills and Boon have some standards.

a.cricket

[SandfleaCSC]

Still waiting on Saddam and Sue Grafton's collaboration on "D is for Dead Meat"