Saddam Hussein: Iraq’s answer to Barbara Cartland?
Name the 37 Scots who have won the European Cup or Champions League. –J.
Celtic: Hughes, Clark, Mcbride, Gallagher, O’neill, Simpson, Craig, Gemmell, Murdoch, Mcneill, Johnstone, Wallace, Chalmers, Auld, Lennox, Fallon. Manchester Utd: Law, Burns, Crerand, Fitzpatrick, Ryan. Nottingham Forest: O’hare, Robertson, Mcgovern, Burns, Gray. Villa: Evans, Bremner, Mcnaught. Liverpool: Gillespie, Dalglish, Souness, Nicol, Hansen, Robertson. Dortmund: Lambert.
This is really bizarre, but I was looking to buy some books for my elderly aunt, who is a big Barbara Cartland fan.
I really don’t know what I put as a search term, but one book that came up was The Fortified Castle. Amazingly, the author was Saddam Hussein.
Yes, the former Iraqi leader’s picture was on the cover.
Was this some kind of spoof? – M. No, it was quite real.
He had four romantic novels to his name: Zabibah And The King, The Fortified Castle, Men And The City and Begone, Demons, written between 2001 and 2003.
In fact, the fourth novel is alleged to have been completed the day before the American-led coalition invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003.
Although it is more than likely that the books were partly ghost-written, Hussein did indeed have a major hand in writing all of them.
The first, Zabibah And The King, is a love story about a powerful ruler of medieval Iraq and a beautiful commoner girl named Zabibah.
The Fortified Castle’s plot is about the delayed wedding of an Iraqi hero, who fought in the war against Iran, to a Kurdish girl.
The rise of Hussein’s own political party, the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, is the backbone of his third book, Men And The City.
And the plot of his final tome, Begone Demons, features an Arab army invading their enemy’s land and destroying two massive towers which, no doubt, is a reference to the September 11 attacks on America by al Qaida.