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w w w . p r o s p e c t - m a g a z i n e . c o . u k --- Saddam the romancier: "
It may be time to assess Saddam's place in the genre of 'dic-lit'


In an isolated prison cell, an ageing, mustachioed gentleman sits writing at a small canteen table. Recent months have seen a stark change in his fortunes. Gone are the Gucci suits and French hair dye. Gone is the entourage of supporters. The writer has very little outside contact now, save the occasional visits from the Red Cross and his interrogators.


He has no idea if the novel he is working on, an epic allegorical tale of passion and revenge, will ever be published.

Provisionally entitled The Great Awakening, his fifth novel will emerge into a very different critical climate from that which greeted the others. In his home country his works were acclaimed bestsellers with sales into the millions. One was made into a 20-part television series. It had recently been announced that his books were to be studied as part of the national school curriculum. And then the regime changed.

For the last eight years, Saddam Hussein has been carving out an alternative career as a writer of romantic and fantasy fiction, full of thinly veiled political allegory, grandiose rhetoric and autobiography. He has published four novels in less than five years - prolific for someone whose day job was, presumably, fairly demanding.

Many statesmen and revolutionaries have been consummate writers of prose and poetry. Saddam, however, is part of a less honourable tradition - of despots who have turned their attentions to the arts. From Nero to Napoleon, Hitler to Mao, there is sufficient output to suggest that we acknowledge this as a genre in its own right: dictator literature.

As with any genre, the range of dic-lit talent runs from the literary to the populist. Fellow middle eastern autocrat and dic-lit star Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has built a solid literary reputation based on a collection of short story fiction entitled The Village, the Village, the Earth, the Earth and the Suicide of the Astronaut. Published in 1998, there followed an international edition, retitled Escape to Hell and Other Stories. This included a foreword from Pierre Salinger, one of JFK's press spokesmen, who says the writings provided insight into a unique mind. "

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