Novel
Saddam City
أنا الذي رأى
Mahmoud Saeed · 1981
Synopsis
Mustafa Ali Noman, a teacher in Baghdad, is arrested one morning at the gates of his school without knowing what he is accused of. For months he is passed from one prison to another, cut off from his family, interrogated, a witness to the tortures inflicted on the other detainees, until he understands that being free now means only one thing: the next arrest. He holds on only through the friendship and mutual help of the prisoners he meets.
Context
The novel was written in 1981, after its author's detention in 1980. The Syrian censors cut two chapters from it, then refused its publication; it finally appeared in Syria in 1995, with Dar al-Mada, in Damascus. The English translation by Ahmad Sadri, a professor of sociology, was published in London by Saqi under the title Saddam City, and an Italian translation followed under the same title.
Who it is for
In Arabic, translated into English and Italian. The torture scenes are direct and repeated.
Prizes and reception
Its author's most famous novel, which Anglophone critics have compared to Kafka and Solzhenitsyn.