The Sirens of Baghdad

This is the first fiction that we have read. With his novel, the author has the chance to explore the psychology of the certain elements of the current war in Iraq--the erosion of traditional life, the psychological pressure of the war, the irrationality of violence and the often terrifying meeting of Irzqi people with American soldiers. As we will discuss today, the author was an officer in the Algerian army during the Algerian civil war. He knows what he is writing about. And he can sense that in his terrifying account of Sulayman's death--he knows just how is body would fall, just how a head would respond to a bullet.