The Demonic Comedy: Some Detours in the Baghdad of Saddam Hussein [Hardcover]

Paul William Roberts (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1998

A hilarious and horrific account of three journeys into the dark heart of contemporary Iraq.

Paul William Roberts first visited Iraq during the Arab summit in 1990. He went back in 1991 during the Gulf War. One of the few Western journalists to get into Iraq, he was arrested by soldiers on the outskirts of Baghdad at the height of the Allied attack and witnessed the nightmarish effects of the bombing on the city's civilians and infrastructure. In 1995, he received a surprise invitation to the International Babylon Festival and was able to revisit what little was left of Baghdad.

Roberts ranges from a Hunter Thompson-like gonzo journalism to skilled historical analysis, untangling the complicated history of Iraq and its neighbors, to intrepid interviews, discussing movies and religion with a frightening array of madmen, from Hussein himself, the man "whose mother looked like Anthony Quinn playing Mother Teresa," to Assad Bayoud al-Tamimi, the less-than-benevolent father figure of the Islamic Jihad.

At once chillingly horrifying and hysterically funny, The Demonic Comedy is a unique travel memoir, an eyewitness testament to the horrors of dictatorship and the devastation of war.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A filmmaker and author of, among other books, the well-received India travelogue Empire of the Soul, Paul William Roberts writes as if he were Outside magazine's British correspondent, filtering extravagant irony through a bottle of Scotch. This could be distracting in a book about a place like Iraq; sometimes, indeed, his long-range metaphors stray their course. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine what besides laughter might get a person through the absurdities of everyday life in Baghdad, where a "political machine increasingly bent on shaping reality in its own image" has named everything after Saddam Hussein, and erected monstrous public memorials in its wake. "There's not much that is secret about Iraq's secret police, the feared Mukhabarat," Roberts writes. "Its officers all have moustaches as much like Saddam's luxuriant broom of a growth as they can manage (and most Iraqi men can manage a reasonably prodigious facsimile)."

Shifting uneasily beneath the humor, though, lies the dark heart of the story, and it becomes darker as the book continues, revealing the soullessness of government leaders, the abuse of the Iraqi people, and, of course, the unsavory details of Western involvement in that country's history. The humor Roberts brings to the book turns out to be a necessary counterweight to tragedy. --Maria Dolan

From Publishers Weekly

Fusing gonzo journalism with lucid political history, this hilarious, insightful and skewering look at Saddam Hussein's Iraq presents Westerners with a rare window into a country and a people often demonized but rarely understood. A Canadian journalist and film producer with a doctorate in ancient Middle Eastern history, Roberts has written similarly lively and perspicacious books on India (Empire of the Soul) and biblical history (In Search of the Birth of Jesus). Here he relates three very different trips he took to Iraq during the 1990s. The first finds him covering the 1990 Arab Summit held in Baghdad in which he vividly details how Hussein's Stasi-trained secret police keeps the population in a terrified state of "perpetual Inquisition." The section's darkly comic centerpiece is Roberts's interview with Saddam himself, on a morning when Roberts, desperately hungover, accidentally downs a long-lost tab of Ecstasy. Even on a drug that inspires feelings of expansive love, Roberts is chilled by Hussein's presence. Part II traces Roberts's 1991 experiences as one of the few journalists to witness the devastation suffered by Iraqi civilians during the Gulf war?casualties flatly denied by the U.S. State Department. In the final section, he attends the 1995 "International Babylon Festival" and visits a people all but destroyed by 1000% inflation. Roberts offers provocative insights on the Gulf war: drawing on interviews with April Glaspie, America's ambassador to Iraq, he shows that officials of the Bush administration were neither surprised by the invasion of Kuwait nor unaware of what America stood to gain by it. Reading a bit like a tonier, liberal P.J. O'Rourke, Roberts proves a witty equal-opportunity skeptic.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 294 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T); 1 Amer ed edition (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374138230
• ISBN-13: 978-0374138233
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,959,895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ultra cynical gonzo journalism at it's finest, January 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Demonic Comedy: Some Detours in the Baghdad of Saddam Hussein (Hardcover)

Earnest idealists and humorless conservatives will never get it. The book is screemingly funny, obviously written by a keen student of the tragiocomic human condition. Roberts does a fine job clubbing us over the head with the absurd realities of third world existance (and making us enjoy it), while never letting us forget the underlying human tragedy. Nothing's sacred here, not history, not his host's English skills, not the press corps, not 300 pound gay secret policeman, not George Bush, and certainly not Saddam Hussein. I particularly enjoyed Roberts' hilarious commentary on Saddam Hussein's official biography, his tripped out interview with the demonic dictator poster boy himself, and the bit where he dared the leader of Islamic Jihad to show him exactly, exactly mind you, where it says in the Koran that Israel must be destroyed. I also loved the eerily plausible conspiracy theory where George Bush orchestrated the invasion of Kuwait. On another level I cannot forget the harrowing descriptions of a clandestine trip into the heart of Bagdad in the midst of the Gulf War bombing. The book had me laughing and at the same time educated me a bit about the history of the region. I liked it immensly, but then I'm more cynical then your average third world dictator.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars PWR Does it Again, March 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Demonic Comedy: Some Detours in the Baghdad of Saddam Hussein (Hardcover)

A savagely funny, bitingly realistic description of three visits to Iraq, before, during and after Desert Storm. Chilling in its detailed realism. Buy it! (or at least check it out at the library)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Humorous, eye-opening account of the Iraqi situation, February 2, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Tiburon, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Demonic Comedy: Some Detours in the Baghdad of Saddam Hussein (Hardcover)

The best qualities of this book were it's humor, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and its open-minded account of the realities of life in Iraq. However, if you are offended by harsh language, by irreverence towards authority, or by cynicism, then you may not like what you read. Also, some of the funniest parts were the author's (supposedly) phonetically accurate accounts of conversations with various Arab people. While I found these very funny, I was a little concerned that they appealed to a certain stereotype. But since I don't mind when my foreign friends make fun of me, I comfort myself that I am entitled to laugh at this purported butchery of the English language (matched only by my last sentence!).

I also enjoyed the book's exploration of the causes of the Iraqi situation. As an American, I found some of the author's conclusions offensive, but overall, I thought he did a good job of extrapolating some very plausible explanations out of what seemed like a limited amount of exposure (which is still infinite compared to mine). Profound and insightful conclusions were drawn out of what were often very ordinary situations, and the whole thing was woven together with an almost total lack of pretense.

Overall, I think I came away with a better understanding of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi situation, and the similarities of human nature around the world. The humor, the realism, the disregard for authority, propaganda, and easy answers -- all of these factors made the book a pleasure to read.