The President's Gardens
by Muhsin Al-Ramli
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Pub Date Apr 20 2017 | Archive Date May 17 2017
Quercus Books | MacLehose Press
Description
One Hundred Years of Solitude meets The Kite Runner in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
"A contemporary tragedy of epic proportions. No author is better placed than Muhsin Al-Ramli, already a star in the Arabic literary scene, to tell this story. I read it in one sitting".
Hassan Blasim, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The Iraqi Christ.
On the third day of Ramadan, the village 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.
Translated from the Arabic by Luke Leafgren
Advance Praise
‘Deeply painful and satirical, The President's Gardens is a contemporary tragedy of epic proportions. No author is better placed than Muhsin Al-Ramli, already a star in the Arabic literary scene, to tell this story. I read it in one sitting.’ – Hassan Blasim, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
‘One of the most important contemporary Iraqi novelists and writers.’ - El Mundo
‘A novel filled with details . . . with passion, homeland, revolution, and grief. It represents a landmark in the progression of Iraqi literature.’ – Miral Al-Tahawi
‘How do you preserve dignity amidst the relentless carnage and mutilation 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 McAlindin, author of Upbeat: The Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq.
‘Masterful.’ - Malu Halasa, co-author and editor of Syria Speaks.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780857056788 |
| PRICE | £12.99 (GBP) |
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