Another review from Down Under, this time from the Nelson...
Another review from Down Under, this time from the Nelson Mail in New Zealand which puts it up there Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah, which is flattering but I hope I don’t end up needing 24/7 police protection like the author of the Mafia expose.
An excerpt from the review:
“It’s not often that journalists can work themselves and their opinions deep into their own reportage and get away with it. Mostly, it ends up as mere polemic, or dull, who-cares rambling. But sometimes, the reach and courage of their approach allows them to get away with more pontificating than should be bearable.
So it is with James Hider’s reports from the heart of the holy wars in the Middle East and Roberto Saviano’s hair-raising recitations of the numerous sins of the Neapolitan mafia.
Mostly, Hider’s book is a straightforward foreign correspondent’s observations from Iraq around the time that the insurrection against the American invasion started ripping the country into little pieces. It’s a largely excellent read, darkly amusing, cynical in the way only the justifiably jaded can manage, gripping and depressing by equal measure, principally for its insight into the culture and people buried beneath Iraq’s miseries. Hider is The Times’ Middle East bureau chief, so his reportage is up there with the best: his recounting of the ill-fated 2004 Shia pilgrimage to the holy city of Kabala is superb”
The full article can be found at
Also, The List, the Edinburgh entertainment weekly, gave the book a four-star review and said it was “essential stuff for anyone concerned with the dangerous condition of the region in the 21st century – and that should be just about everybody…
“this book is simply a work of solid, captivating, gutsy war reportage,” the review said. “Like any good foreign correspondent, Hider has a nose for a terrifying scrape, and writes with grim humour and sober authority even as the sheer madness of religious bloodletting peaks around him. When you discover that a goat wearing underpants becomes a life or death matter in modern Iraq, you shouldn’t need anyone to spell out that blind, extreme faith is a hopelessly weird and poisonous force.”
The article can be found here:
http://www.list.co.uk/article/15150-james-hider-the-spiders-of-allah/
