Spring 2017

FICTION | APRIL | MACLEHOSE
Modern & Contemporary Fiction (FA),
Fiction in Translation (FYT)
Hardback £16.99 9780857056771
Demy 320 pages
Trade Paperback £13.99 9780857056788
Ebook 9780857056795
Not For Sale: USA & CAN
THE PRESIDENT’S
GARDENS
MUHSIN AL-RAMLI
Translated by Luke Leafgren
One Hundred Years of Solitude meets The
Kite-Runner – set in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
The President’s Gardens is an epic novel about
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, following the lives of three
friends from the beginning of the Iran–Iraq War to
the aftermath of the American invasion.
Abdullah loses twenty years to Iranian captivity
before returning to learn the terrible truth of his
birth. Tariq, the son of the local Sheik, avoids the
army, and becomes a man of power and influence,
able to help his friends but always careful to keep
his own interests closest to his heart. Ibrahim loses
a foot in the first Gulf War before taking on a menial
job in the gardens of one of the president’s many
palaces – a job whose responsibilities will escalate
beyond his wildest imaginings.
The multiple, multi-generational stories woven
together in The President’s Gardens are brought to
life by a vivid and memorable cast of characters.
Epic in scope, moving, philosophical and true, it
packs an ocean of wisdom into its pages, and has
much to impart about war and oppression, love and
marriage, fathers and daughters, and what it means
to live under a murderous, totalitarian regime.
Muhsin Al-Ramli is an Iraqi writer, poet, academic
and translator, born in the village of Sudara in
northern Iraq in 1967. He has lived in Madrid since
1995. The President’s Gardens was longlisted for the
IPAF, known as the “Arabic Booker”, in 2013.
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