Books > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945
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The Prisoner in His Palace - Saddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R415
Discovery Miles 4 150
You Save: R198
(32%)
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The Prisoner in His Palace - Saddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid (Hardcover)
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List price R613
Loot Price R415
Discovery Miles 4 150
You Save R198 (32%)
Supplier out of stock. If you add this item to your wish list we will let you know when it becomes available.
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The Prisoner in His Palace is an evocative and thought-provoking
account of how the lives of twelve young American soldiers deployed
to Iraq are upended when they're asked to guard the most
'high-value detainee' of all, the notorious dictator Saddam
Hussein. What the self-dubbed 'Super Twelve' experience in the
autumn of 2006 is cognitive dissonance at its most extreme.
Expecting to engage with the enemy 'outside the wire', they're
suddenly tasked with guarding and protecting a notorious dictator
until he can be hanged. Watching over Saddam in a former palace the
soldiers dub 'The Rock' and regularly transporting their prisoner
to his raucous trial, they gradually begin to question some of
their firmest beliefs. Rather than the snarling beast they expect,
Saddam proves confoundingly complex - voluble, charming and given
to surprising displays of affection. Perhaps most shockingly, in
his Spartan stoicism and the courage he shows in facing death he
eventually becomes a role model. Employing a timeline that switches
between present and past, The Prisoner in His Palace contrasts the
man entrusted to the Super Twelve's care - a grandfatherly figure
who proves 'good company' - with a younger version of Saddam who is
unspeakably ruthless, views murder and torture as legitimate tools
and constantly keeps those around him in a blind panic. The magic
of this book is that Bardenwerper keeps us on edge even though we
know how it will end. We immediately sense that the Super Twelve
will be forever changed by their experience, and we wonder if we
ourselves will. In this artfully constructed narrative, Saddam, the
'man without a conscience', manages to get everyone around him to
examine theirs.
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