Shoshanapnw's review
My Father's Rifle: A Childhood in Kurdistan by Hiner Saleem
Shoshanapnw's review
rating:
bookshelves: 2008, around-the-world, fiction-literature, memoir-biography, middle-east
rating:
bookshelves: 2008, around-the-world, fiction-literature, memoir-biography, middle-east
Iraq (Kurdistan)
Reviewers aren't clear whether this is fiction or memoir. It appears to be best treated as "fictionalized memoir." Azad Selim is a young boy in Iraqi Kurdistan. As the Baathist regime gains power, his community's life becomes increasingly miserable and its insurgency increases. The book is interesting but choppy and artless, a story without a plot. It is useful for its portrait of Kurdish villages and concerns, and to show U.S. readers a different side of Iraq's conflicts. It is also oddly refreshing to read a book from someone under Iraqi authority who (with his community) applauds Saddam Hussein's overthrow.
Reviewers aren't clear whether this is fiction or memoir. It appears to be best treated as "fictionalized memoir." Azad Selim is a young boy in Iraqi Kurdistan. As the Baathist regime gains power, his community's life becomes increasingly miserable and its insurgency increases. The book is interesting but choppy and artless, a story without a plot. It is useful for its portrait of Kurdish villages and concerns, and to show U.S. readers a different side of Iraq's conflicts. It is also oddly refreshing to read a book from someone under Iraqi authority who (with his community) applauds Saddam Hussein's overthrow.
