"Deftly sketched, simple and poetic, Dreaming of Baghdad drags politics down from the realm of the abstract into the mud, fear, and loneliness of personal experience and psychological ruin that is life under dictatorship. This is a landscape of clandestine struggle and crushing political defeat, of familiar old streets and the alienating structures of exile. Zangana's story is heartbreaking, but her clarity and resilience inspire awe."--Christian Parenti, contributing editor to "The Nation"

"Written with passion and commitment, Dreaming of Baghdad invoked my own dreams, and the joys and pain that memory can bring. A must-read."--Nawal El Saadawi

"Haifa Zangana illuminates the dark realities of Saddam Hussein's Iraq while remembering what she misses from that complex place and time."--Sharnush Parsipur

"Haifa Zangana proves once again that the act of writing can be truly liberating."--Dalia Said Mostafa

"How poorer the world would have been without Haifa Zangana's courageous testimony. Drop anything you are reading and grab hold of a copy of this magnificent book."--Hamid Dabashi

In 1970s Iraq, the Ba'ath Party was at the height of its influence in the Middle East and popularity throughout the West. But a group of activists recognized the disastrous potential of the regime as its charismatic leader, Saddam Hussein, became more powerful. Haifa Zangana was among those resisters, a small group of whom were captured and imprisoned at Abu Ghraib.

From the distance of time and place, Zangana writes during her first years of forced exile from her beloved country about the time of her incarceration, the agonizing loss of comrades to torture and death in prison, the haunted quality of life so far away from home and family, and the ways in which memory conspires to make us forget what sometimes is most dear to us.

Haifa Zangana was just eight years old in 1958 when Iraqis flooded the streets to celebrate their newfound, hard-won freedom from British colonial rule. She came of age in one of the most open societies in the Middle East--until it was shut down in the 1970s by the Ba'ath Party. She was imprisoned for her opposition to Saddam Hussein, and since her release has been living in exile in London. She writes regularly for the "Guardian" and "al-Ahram Weekly," and is the author of many books, including "City of Widows: An Iraqi Woman's Account of War and Resistance."

Ferial J. Ghazoul has been a professor in the department of English and comparative literature at the American University in Cairo since 1979. She is also a co-founder and editor of "Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics."

Exiled, displaced, tortured, and grieving-- each of the five Iraqi women whose lives and losses come to us through Haifa Zangana's skillfully wrought novel is searching in her own way for peace with a past that continually threatens to swallow up the present.

Majda, the widow of a former Ba'ath party official who was killed by the government he served. Adiba, a political dissident tortured under Saddam Hussein's regime. Um Mohammed, a Kurdish refugee who fled her home for political asylum. Iqbal, a divorced mother whose family in Iraq is suffering the effects of Western economic sanctions. And Sahira, the wife of a Communist politician, struggling with his disillusionment and her own isolation. Bound to one another by a common Iraqi identity and a common location in 1990s London, these women come together across differences in politics, ethnic and class background, age, and even language. In narrating the friendship that develops among them, Zangana captures their warmth and humor as well as their sadness, their feelings of despair along with their search for hope, their sense of uprootedness, and their yearnings for home.

Weaving between the women's memories of Iraq-- nostalgic and nightmarish-- and their lives as exiles in London, Zangana's novel gives voice to the richness and complexity of Iraqi women's experiences. Through their stories, the novel represents a powerful critique of the violence done to ordinary people by those who hold power both in Iraq and in the West.

The carefully crafted, subtle, and humorous stories in Packaged Lives show Zangana at her best as a fiction writer. She portrays her subjects keenly, sensitively, and lovingly but without compromise. Iraqis living in exile come to life in her narratives as men and women who are caught between two worlds. They cannot return to their homeland and are forced to wait for news of Iraq from afar. At the same time, they are unable to fully adjust to life in Britain and make a new home for themselves. The question "What is home?" is at the heart of each story in this collection. Her protagonists, who are stuck in ready-made lives, or "packaged lives," struggle to set themselves free from a web of relationships in which they are entangled. Art, poetry, and nature provide lines of escape. The relief may be fleeting, but the peace of mind and serenity are reached through the moment of epiphany at the end of each story, a much-needed balm.

At a time when the US and UK are contemplating further imperial adventures in Iran, Not One More Death lays bare the act of blatant state terrorism that is the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and reveals the extraordinary tapestry of lies, distortions and gross media manipulation that underpin it. Here, prominent artists, musicians, playwrights, scientists and writers look at the reality behind the rhetoric: how public opinion is wilfully ignored and democracy used as a figleaf for the furthering of colonial ambitions in the Middle East. Not One More Death calls on the US and UK to withdraw troops from Iraq now, and for Bush and Blair to be brought to account for this illegal war.

This title is published on the 6th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, the beginning of the 'War on Terror', John Berger, Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy, Joe Sacco and others examine the consequences. On October 7th 2001, US-led forces invaded Afghanistan, marking the start of George Bush and Tony Blair's War on Terror. Six years on, where have the policies of Bush and Blair left us? Bringing together some of the finest contemporary writers, this wide-ranging anthology, from reportage and faction to fiction, explores the impact of this long war throughout the world, from Palestine to Iraq, Abu Ghraib, the curtailment of civil liberties and manipulation of public opinion. Published in conjunction with Stop the War Coalition and United for Peace and Justice, it provides an urgent, necessary reflection on the causes and consequences of the ideological War on Terror.