It’s short, but in praise…
Malik is an Iraqi shirt salesman determined to believe in his country despite the violence tearing it apart. Aadil is a former army offi cer driven by poverty and anger to build electronic detonators for a group of insurgents he hopes is using his devices to fight the Americans, rather than settle private scores. Their stories come together in this finely written and suspenseful first novel by a former Australian intelligence officer and aid worker, which evokes the sectarian divisions, random violence and moral compromises of life in Baghdad during the final years of the last decade. Dark in parts, darkly humorous in others, Flowers of Baghdad speaks to the desire of us all to make a better future, no matter how black the present.
Julian Swallow
****
