Saddam Wrote Romance Books?

Cafe Society
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      • Newspaper says today that Saddam Hussein is suspected to be the author of a second novel, translated as “The Fortified Castle”. Heck, I never heard about the first one, (trans.) “Zabibah and the King”. The article says that the profits from the second book would be “distributed among the poor, orphans and charity organizations”, as presumably the first’s were. I looked on Amazon and Barnes & Noble but can’t find any listing, and Google turns up numerous other mentions (one of the page of the Canadian artist whose painting was illegally used as the cover art for book#1) but no in-depth reviews or ordering info.
        Both books are loosely described as “comittee-written trash novels” in one article, but I can’t help it, my interest is piqued…
  • Are either of these two books available through normal channels anywhere? Is there an English translation? Are there English reviews on the net anywhere? I found numerous mentions of it, the play, the Iraqi TV show, but not much about what either book was actually about. Lastly, the moderators may frown, but assuming there are no distribution channels in the West for the books, is either downloadable legally or otherwise anywhere?
    dcimper@norcom2000.com
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i’m not sure if we can buy them in english, but i heard the first was gonna be made into a movie for Iraqi TV. Also, i beleive it was published anonimusly at first. Its been a while since i read the story.

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I thought there was a better thread than this - one with several fine examples of Dopers offering their versions of his work - but this is all that came up on my search:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=72649

4

Try googling just Saddam and novel.

Here is the first hit.

From the article

Mr. Hussein has a creative business model that media-mogul wannabes such as Michael Eisner and Rupert Murdoch can only dream about. How would you like to be Mr. Hussein’s literary agent? Talk about Easy Street.

“Hello, this is Lance, representing eternal leader of strength Saddam Hussein. He’s just finished a new book he’d like to see published. What’s it about? Does that matter? Would you like to see your head separated from your shoulders? You’d like to print 6 million copies? Great. I’ll have the pages shipped in a cooler so the crayon doesn’t run.”

5

Libya’s Qadhaffi (Or Ghaddafi, or Kaddaffi) is also an author…of “Escape to Hell”

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/africa/libya/read.htm

Here is a rather gushing review…
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8744/dsreview.htm