See here for methodology. I am excluding books not actually set in the current borders of Iraq, but there was only one of these this time.
Title | Author | GR raters | LT owners |
The Epic of Gilgamesh | (Anonymous) | 109,102 | 10,282 |
American Sniper | Chris Kyle | 135,061 | 3,557 |
Murder in Mesopotamia | Agatha Christie | 62,876 | 4,129 |
They Came to Baghdad | Agatha Christie | 22,814 | 2,852 |
The Yellow Birds | Kevin Powers | 26,163 | 1,880 |
Pride of Baghdad | Brian K. Vaughan | 25,132 | 1,704 |
Redeployment | Phil Klay | 24,641 | 1,510 |
Generation Kill | Evan Wright | 19,330 | 1,626 |
Well, I was worried that this list would be completely dominated by war porn, telling the story of people who know Iraq only through having been been sent there in a brutal and illegal invasion, but in fact I am delighted that a real indigenous epic, possibly the earliest known work in the sff genre, wins this week; also amusing to have two Agatha Christies in the top four.
I disqualified Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain, because although it is about the recent Iraq war, it is mostly set in Texas, as is the film.
The top book on my list by an Iraqi writer is Frankenstein in Baghdad, by Ahmed Saadawi, which sounds rather good. (Gilgamesh was probably written by a local, but millennia before the concept of ‘Iraqi’ had any meaning.)
Next up: Argentina, Afghanistan and Yemen. (Yep, despite everything, Yemen has a bigger population than Canada or Poland.)
India | China | USA | Indonesia | Pakistan | Nigeria | Brazil (revisited) | Bangladesh (revisited) | Russia | Mexico | Japan | Philippines (revisited) | Ethiopia (revisited) | Egypt | DR Congo | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Germany | France | Thailand | UK | Tanzania | South Africa | Italy | Myanmar | Kenya | Colombia | South Korea | Sudan | Uganda | Spain | Algeria | Iraq | Argentina | Afghanistan