He Is Different

The intellectual, literary and political life of Iraq through much of this century is reflected in this novel. Haroun/Ahmad Sawsa, a Jew who converted to Islam in his thirties, becomes an historian of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Kassem is a Communist who is arrested and tortured and eventually flees to Eastern Europe. The third, Nissim Assad, a Jewish poet who chose not to emigrate to Israel in the 1950’s, finds his life blighted by the Arab-Israeli conflict and finally moves to Tel Aviv.