What a new novel about three
friends growing up in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq can tell us about human nature
Iraqi author Muhsin
Al-Ramli’s brother was executed for planning a coup against Saddam. Yet the
narrative here is driven neither by anger nor partisan hate
by Rachel
Halliburton
It is typical of the Rabelaisian impudence
of this book that the reader does not encounter the title’s subject—the
President’s gardens—until towards the end. 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. From its arresting start—“In a land without bananas, the
village awoke to nine banana crates, each containing the severed head of one of
its sons”—the author evokes both despair and joy in lives perpetually branded by
conflict. Part of its power derives from the knowledge that its stories are
firmly rooted in history.
Iraqi author Muhsin
Al-Ramli’s brother was executed for planning a coup against Saddam, and the
book’s opening mirrors the fate that befell nine of his other relatives. Yet
the narrative is driven neither by anger nor partisan hate. Through the story
of the three friends—the long-suffering Ibrahim, Abdullah and Tariq—paints a
portrait of modern Iraq that tips its hat both to the picaresque spark of Cervantes
and the magical realism of García Márquez. (Al-Ramli has translated Don
Quixote into
Arabic.) 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.
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