The Dictator's Last Night Quotes

“In the final analysis,power is a misunderstanding: you think you know then you realize you have made a thumping mistake.”
― Yasmina Khadra, The Dictator's Last Night

“الثقة موت صغير”
― ياسمينة خضرا, ‫ليلة الريّس الأخيرة‬

“.لكلّ شيء ثمنه يا منصور. الوفء كالخيانة
.لا نُليّن قلب التّمساح بكفكفة دموعه”
― ياسمينة خضرا, ‫ليلة الريّس الأخيرة‬

“In vain I warned other Arab leaders, those pleasure-seeking gluttons who only listen to the fawning and simpering of those who owe them favors. There was a full complement of them at Cairo, lined up like onions, spying on each other on the sly, half of them so conceited they could not stop behaving like constipated patriarchs, the other half too thick to be able to look serious. Arrivistes who thought they had really arrived, comic-opera presidents unable to shake off their country-bumpkin reflexes, petrodollar emirs looking like rabbits straight out of the magician's hat, sultans wrapped in their robes like ghosts, disgusted at the blathering eulogies the speakers were trotting out ad infinitum. Why were they there? They cared for nothing that did not concern their personal fortunes. Busy stuffing their pockets, they refused to look up to see how dizzyingly fast the world was changing or how tomorrow's storm clouds of hate were gathering on the horizon.”
― Yasmina Khadra, The Dictator's Last Night