The President's Gardens - Tapa dura

"A beautiful novel . . . In writing about ordinary Iraqis who pay the cost of wars waged by remote, autocratic leaders, Al-Ramli touches on deep and timeless themes . . . Consistently compelling."--Alastair Mabbott, Glasgow Herald

"A story buffeted by the wider ties of history: the bloody churn of dictatorship, invasion, and occupation . . . The President's Gardens evokes the fantastical, small-town feel of One Hundred Years of Solitude . . . Shocks and enchants."--Tom Graham, Financial Times

"One of the most important contemporary Iraqi novelists and writers."--El Mundo

"A stunning achievement . . . Abdullah's journey gives the book its title: he ends up tending the Iraqi president's sumptuous garden--but of course digging holes in the earth is not as innocuous a task as it might seem under his rule. [Yet] Saddam Hussein's name is never mentioned, which has the effect of allowing The President's Gardens to work as a comment on any totalitarian regime."--Ben East, The National

"A novel filled with details . . . with passion, homeland, revolution, and grief. It represents a landmark in the progression of Iraqi literature."--Miral Al-Tahawy, author of Brooklyn Heights

"Masterful . . . In The President's Gardens, the dead have already suffered enough; it is the living who do not come away unscathed."--Malu Halasa, co-author and editor of Syria Speaks

"This extraordinary portrait of three friends growing up in Saddam Hussein's Iraq uses a range of storytelling traditions, infusing tragedy with comedy, the epic with the intimate, and the real with the surreal . . . By the time the book reaches the elaborate gardens where many of Saddam's victims are buried, it has taken the reader through tragedy, imprisonment, and war. Yet the overwhelming impression left is of the indefatigability of the human spirit. A tour de force."--Rachel Halliburton, Prospect

"How do you preserve dignity amidst the relentless carnage and multination of modern Iraq? Told with a fresh transparency and tender insight, The President's Gardens draws on the unfathomable resilience of the Iraqi people, leaving me speechless and humbled."--Paul MacAlindin, author of Upbeat: The Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq

Named one of the Best Fiction Novels of 2017 by The Guardian

"[An] important work . . . Individual stories offer personal perspectives on the history of Iraq, which has been in a constant state of war or conflict since 1980, and surreal and brutal descriptions of war atrocities are conveyed. Family secrets offer another window onto the past as relatives struggle to find peace despite news of the dead and missing. Al-Ramli's poignant tale is a standard in contemporary Middle Eastern literature."
--Booklist

In this extraordinary novel by heralded Iraqi author Muhsin Al-Ramli, One Hundred Years of Solitude meets The Kite Runner against the backdrop of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
"A profoundly moving investigation of love, death, and injustice." --The Guardian
"A standard in contemporary Middle Eastern literature." --Booklist
"A stunning achievement." --The National

On the third day of Ramadan, a small village in Iraq wakes to find the severed heads of nine of its sons stacked in banana crates by the bus stop. One of them belonged to one of the most wanted men in Iraq, known to his friends as Ibrahim the Fated. How did this good and humble man earn the enmity of so many? What did he do to deserve such a death?
The answer lies in his lifelong friendship with Abdullah Kafka and Tariq the Befuddled, who each have their own remarkable stories to tell. It lies on the scarred, irradiated battlefields of the Gulf War and in the ashes of a revolution strangled in its cradle. It lies in the steadfast love of his wife and the festering scorn of his daughter.
And, above all, it lies behind the locked gates of the President's gardens, buried alongside the countless victims of a pitiless reign of terror.