The Rope

Starred review from January 15, 2016
A searing novel of the Iraq War from an Iraqi point of view, with Saddam Hussein in a starring role. Our narrator has no name, but The Tyrant certainly does, and it is on every tongue. As Makiya's (The Rock: A Tale of Seventh-Century Jerusalem, 2003, etc.) novel opens, Saddam's body is swaying in the breeze, having been transferred by The Occupier to the Iraqis as "proof of our independence from the American invaders." Into that brief phrase a whole world is packed: the Americans are unwanted conquerors, the rulers of Iraq are exiles driven to hang Saddam out of "revenge, or blood libel, or communal solidarity," and a once-coherent nation, for better or worse, is now splintered irreparably. The narrator, who turns up at key moments in this destruction, has an overarching goal: to find out what happened to his father in 1991, when, in the wake of the first Gulf War, a purge Stalin might have envied swept through Saddam's ranks. What he learns about that tragedy, clue by clue, makes it all the more unpalatable. Meanwhile, Saddam, who "lives not in [Iraqi] hearts but in their heads as an idea, a fixation they cannot rid themselves of, even though he has nothing to do with their lives," emerges from the shadows of his hidden bunker to become a character much like Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, helping the narrator tease out the truth in a kind of twisted Socratic dialogue: "I was your president," he intones. "And you are my children, whether you like it or not; even the bastards who sat in judgment over me are my children." In that fatherly role, Saddam asserts that a nation is really just an idea, and no matter how poisonous the idea might be, it is hard to uproot once planted. A close study of the psychology of oppression and dictatorship, of a piece with the author's now classic nonfiction study Republic of Fear (1989).

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February 1, 2016
In a post-Saddam Iraq already burdened with sobering statistics, here's a particularly compelling one: there were 268 separate armed organizations operating between 2003 and 2006. Which one of these was to blame for the killing of Sayyid Majid al-Khoei in Najaf, one of Islam's holiest cities, on the same day that the Tyrant was put to death? This real-life tragedy, along with the mystery behind his father's disappearance, galvanizes the unnamed narrator of Makiya's (The Rock, 2002) penetrating novel about Iraqi politics and who really is to blame for the geopolitical devastation that continues to unfold in the Middle East. Learning the ropes of a shaky world from his uncle, the young Shia narrator finds himself schooled in hate, a vehicle he finds difficult to reconcile with the message of love and the larger concept of nationhood. Astutely challenging the meaning of statehood and allegiance (is he an Arab first, an Iraqi, or a Shia, the narrator wonders), this deeply resonant tale of betrayal and loss reads as much as an act of atonement for Makiya, a vocal supporter of the Iraq War, as it does about the fundamental nature of Iraqi power plays. Nuanced and essential reading for every global citizen, this novel proves that all politics are personal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

October 15, 2015

Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University, Makiya was born in Baghdad; his 1989 Republic of Fear became a best seller with the advent of the first Gulf War. This novel, featuring a Shiite militiaman whose father was imprisoned under Saddam Hussein, examines life in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, which Makiya supported.

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