Setback of the Century

About the Book

Three months after the US war on Iraq in 2003, I decided to travel to my home town, Mosul in northern Iraq just to embrace my family members and close friends . While I was walking around Mosul streets seeking what has been left of my childhood, a US patrol stopped me to ask : "Where are you from? Why are you here?" Immediately, I burst out into laughter. The soldier turned to a sergeant next to him and wondered: "Is he mad?" Then, he angrily asked, "Why are you laughing?" That laughter soon turned into a philosophical question. "Imagine yourself in my place, what would you answer?. The soldier got more upset while the outrage was raging me. In the evening of the same day, I heard in the news, that a US patrol was hit in an explosion in the same street. The image of the 20-year-old soldier immediately flashed up in my mind to tell me: I wish I had an answer from that soldier to my question. This is how I came to write this book in an attempt to outline a wider scene of the backgrounds that led to wage that war on Iraq.

About the Author

The Author, Dr. Fatih Abdulsalam is an Iraqi daily columnist and novelist living at present in London. For over a decade he has been the Editor-in-Chief of the International Edition of the London-based Arabic daily newspaper, Azzaman. He witnessed several wars in his native country where he used to be a professor of modern Arabic literature and criticism at the University of Mosul. So far, he has published three novels, four collections of short stories and four books on criticism and thought. Historically speaking, his first short story appeared in 1977. Recently, his works were the theme of research papers by two Master's Degree university candidates. Since mid 1990s his literary and journalistic works were also a subject matter at the Iraqi universities.