LITERATURE
Cent un jours à Bagdad
Åsne Seierstad
Publication date 2008 march 16
On january 2003, Åsne Seierstad arrives in Bagdad with a 10 days visa. She finally stays there more than three months, attending the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the rise of chaos. There, she listens to the people, men and women who resign themselves little by little to the coming war, and try however to live in spite of such threat, and then to survive in the storm.
Cent un jours à Badgad is a precious document on the practice of war correspondents, and a heartrending testimony on the Iraki people into the war.
Åsne Seierstad is one of the rare journalists to have covered the fall of the Talibans and Saddam Hussein’s regime. One of her previous book, The Bookseller of Kabul, was translated in more than forty languages. Her articles for the press and TV reports appeared worldwide. She also received for her articles and books numerous international prizes.
Translated from the Norvegian by Loup-Maëlle Besançon.
336 pages - in French only - 22 €
Excerpt
« Je raconte ce que je vois. Ils peuvent entendre, en studio, les déflagrations et les explosions dans le téléphone. À plusieurs reprises, je remarque que l’énorme hôtel de béton est ébranlé et que les fenêtres tremblent. Une explosion, je parle, nouvelle explosion, je continue à parler, une autre explosion, et là nous remercions Åsne Seierstad à Bagdad. La liaison est coupée. L’attaque se durcit de minute en minute. Métal contre béton, métal contre marbre, métal contre fer. Je reste allongée par terre après avoir raccroché. C’est donc ça, être bombardé. Les poings sont serrés, les bras crispés, les yeux fixent le vide sans rien voir. Ça y est, nous y sommes ! »
Reviews
"Seierstad puts a human face to and provides insight into the mosaic of the people of Iraq, the Bath party supporters, the dissidents, and the average person caught in the nightmare of the Saddam regime and the horrors of war." - Jane S. Drabkin-School Library Journal
"A valuable impressionistic portrait." - Diane Spivey-Publishers Weekly