Escape from Baghdad!

by Saad Z. Hossain

Welcome to Baghdad during the US invasion. A desperate American military has created a power vacuum that needs to be filled. Religious fanatics, mercenaries, occultists, and soldiers are all vying for power. So how do regular folks try to get by?

If you're Dagr and Kinza, a former economics professor and a streetwise hoodlum, you turn to dealing in the black market. But everything is about to change, because they have inherited a very important the star torturer of Hussein’s recently collapsed regime, Captain Hamid, who promises them untold riches if they smuggle him out of Baghdad.

With the heat on and nothing left for them in Baghdad, they enlist the help of Private Hoffman, their partner in crime and a U.S. Marine. In the chaos of a city without rule, getting out of Baghdad is no easy task and when they become embroiled in a mystery surrounding an ancient watch that doesn’t tell time, nothing will ever be the same. With a satiric eye firmly cast on the absurdity of human violence, Escape from Baghdad! features shades of Catch-22 and Three Kings while giving voice, ribald humor, and firepower to to people often referred to as "collateral damage."

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Magical Realism, Contemporary, Thriller, War

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this. Read it now. It makes me envious, determined to write another book. It would also be a spectacular movie if someone only had the balls for it. Telling, comic, violent, appalling, realist, magical, deranged, bleak, superb. If Jeanette Winterson and Hunter Thompson got high, got kidnapped by ISIL, lived in a warzone for a few years and escaped with the aid of a very angry Umberto Eco, and then wrote about it, you might get something like this.

[Book Riot Community]

I loved this book an unreasonable amount! Two black marketeer friends in Baghdad (one a former professor and the other a career criminal) come into possession of one of the area’s notorious torturers. While trying to decide what to do with him – kill him? sell him to his enemies? set him free? – he proposes a different plan: He has a map that will lead them to a stash of gold, which he will share with his captors, in exchange for his life. They agree, because mad cash, yo. On their journey to find riches, they will cross paths with self-serving American soldiers looking to make few bucks, mad scientists, a secret underground library with a half-wild librarian, deadly militia, and possible immortals from an ancient religious sect. A madcap black comedy that doesn’t downplay the dangers, desperation, and at times, preposterousness, of living in a war zone, this one is not to be missed. — Liberty Hardy


from The Best Books We Read In March: http://bookriot.com/2015/04/01/riot-r...

[Kalin · Rating 4 out of 5]

What. Did I. Just. Read.

Try and figure it out from my notes:

https://choveshkata.net/forum/viewtop...

Then come back and tell me. Please?

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Lavie Tidhar's post about this book, and got a copy for myself. I'm very glad I did. EFB is one of those wonderfully unclassifiable books that I love. (So many books are described as 'famous title meets famous title'.) The only book that came to mind after reading this was Alif the Unseen by G Willow Wilson, and that's just because they both had middle eastern fantasy elements. Escape from Baghdad is grittier than Ms. Wilson's novel however.

Anyway, a great read. It captures a part of the madness that I am all too certain was/is Baghdad after the invasion. It's action packed, with bits of gallows humor, and characters who grow throughout the course of the book. It also has some good historical conspiracy thrown in, which I always enjoy. If the summary on the back of the book agrees with you, I highly recommend Escape from Baghdad.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Escape from Baghdad’ is another book that I have no memory of deciding to read, yet enjoyed a lot. I often forget how or where I found out about a book, because it doesn’t take much to intrigue me. I’ve read novels just because they had a nice cover and make no apologies for it. Anyway, here we have a gruesome dark comedy of the second Iraq War with shades of Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War (one of my favourite books) and Buffalo Soldiers (adapted into one of my favourite films). In contrast to both of those, however, this centres on a trio of Iraqis rather than American soldiers. The plots is febrile, violent, and picaresque, frequently going off on bizarre tangents. Latterly it coalesces around a mysterious supernatural conspiracy which, like everything else in Iraq, is thrown into chaos by the American invasion. There are some vivid and spectacular action scenes, as well as moments of genuine creepiness. I found it consistently funny, because I'm very fond of wartime dark comedy. The supernatural stuff was a little hit and miss, although I loved the Furies. The juxtapositions of American consumerism and ancient mysticism amid urban collapse are very effective. There isn’t a great deal of character development amid the violent mayhem, but it’s definitely refreshing to see the perspective of the invaded rather than the invaders. There are flashes of nihilistic irony worthy of Catch-22 in what is essentially a violent thriller. It could and should be made into an excellent movie.

[K.J. Charles]

Okay, this was amazing. Kind of a gonzo novel set in post-collapse Iraq, with gunmen on the streets, the US military charging about, and everything gone to shit. Dagr is an ex university professor turned arms dealer with his friend Kinza, who has basically slipped several gears entirely. They team up with an ex torturer of Saddam's guard and an idiot savant drugged up US soldier in a kind of flailing search for treasure. Only not. This is not a very summarisable book tbh.

It's brutal (the violence isn't *too* explicit except at one point which honestly made me feel queasy but there's a lot of it and it's pervasive); it's savagely satirical about the whole situation and the US troops; it's got a fantasy element about hidden cults and lost knowledge and eternal life and djinn; mostly it's about people responding to an utterly irrational situation with equal irrationality. The heroes have all suffered appalling losses and the real horror of the situation is the backdrop to the baroque and bizarre plot events.

It's super savage and raw and weird and high-octane and very funny at points, and also actually really human and moving. Not my usual reading matter, but I absolutely loved it.

[Saba Imtiaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is an all-consuming, almost feral quality to Escape from Baghdad, one that lends itself almost perfectly to its setting. After all, this is a novel set in a post-invasion Baghdad where — almost like a tableau — a war is being played out between a loose nexus of militias, remnants of the Baathist regime and the United States’ forces.
Saad Z. Hossain’s debut novel navigates these actors and acts spectacularly. . Escape from Baghdad! is one of those wondrous books that will appeal to readers who may be stuck in a genre or style. Hossain takes the best of literary genres — sci-fi, magical realism, historical fiction — using everything from djinns trapped in jars to medical mysteries involving storied figures from the past.

more here: http://www.asianage.com/books/elusive...

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dagr is a former economics professor and Kinza is a street thug who have captured Saddam Hussein’s head torturer who teases a hidden bunker in Mosul filled with riches. Set during the American occupation of Iraq, the promise of riches sets this trio on a path that leads them to blood-soaked mayhem, ancient cults, mythical forces and an American soldier that’s either insanely brilliant or patently idiotic.

This is a country sitting on millennia of history that has shaped it well before American soldiers left their bootprints in the sand. It is a chaotic, monstrous, absurd, tragic and frankly hilarious pulpy yarn. It left me breathless in its viciousness and surprised me constantly with each new development.

[Bina · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐

[Nadia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is really trying to be clever and referential but it just fell flat for me and it doesn't really start improving untill too late in the plot.
The Druze references made me uncomfortable, tbh, I feel like if they were looking for an obscure to Iraq(and the author and audience anyways) culture for a relic to base the magical realistic aspects of the story on they easily could have used a dead culture or religion instead of one that is still around and practiced.

The most curious thing to me about this book is the fact that it exists. Iraq fiction (or non-fiction) have never sold well in the US and this book does not fit the mold of American liberal books and movies set in the Iraq war. It also isn't an obnoxious nationalistic propaganda story set in Iraq (like say Valley of the Wolves.) It is probably not accurate to call it an apolitical book but it is not polemic either and (afaik) a lot of its influences seem to be American. So I do wonder about the audience for this book, do Middle East war stories have readers in South Asia?

FWIW if anyone is curious I compiled a list of my favourite Iraq books here.

[David Agranoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a novel about a subject and setting overdue for exploration in genre novels. The Iraq war has rarely been a topic in sci-fi or horror. The best example I can think of is John Shirley's Constantine tie-in novel Warlord. I have been waiting for someone to tackle the GW Bush lead Iraq invasion in genre fiction for awhile. EFB is set in the chaos about a year after the march 2003 invasion of the country looking for the phantom menace of Weapons of Mass Destruction. This sets a stage for a violent, chaotic crazy story that plays against the war torn city pretty straight at first, but in the second act stuff gets weird fantasy wise.

Probably the best thing about this novel is that it is not told from the point of view of a U.S. solider, the two lead characters Dagr and Kinza are locals whose lives were majorly disrupted by the invasion. There is one US solider character - Hoffman is an interesting one, but the majority of the story is seen through local eyes. This is something I liked as most of the media portrayal of Iraq that this country gets is from US solider's point of view.

Dagr and Kinza are doing what they can to survive, and in the process they discover a man in hiding that is wanted by both sides. They him as a means to get out of the city. There is more to this man, who has an ancient history and once they make there way across the city things get weird. Crazed Alchemists, immortals, magic time pieces are all involved but over all pretty subtle. I enjoyed this novel but it is played mostly straight. I actually would have liked it to be a little more crazy.

This is my first novel by an author from Bangladesh. It seems like it was well researched and felt like Hossain understood the city, but again what do I know. I also didn't laugh as much as I expected from the blurbs on the cover. The humor didn't work for me, but the characters and setting did. I didn't LOVE this book but I enjoyed and really respect what it accomplished. I certainly would read this author again.

[Kdm · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wouldn't even know how to start describing this book, it's a dark humour light fantasy novel which plays out against the backdrop of the Iraq War, more specifically the insurgency phase.

Man I hope for a sequel

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a good book. With characters as iconic and idiosyncratic as any in Catch 22 and MASH . It's action-packed, compelling, weird, funny, and it provides a completely new view of the US invasion of Iraq. I highly recommend it.

[Nate D · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been reading some pretty good pulp lately, and here's another notable, if imperfect example. Notable for the sheer breathless frenzy of the plotting, which seems apt for a book set in amid the maelstrom of U.S.-destabilized Gulf War 2.0 Baghdad circa George W. Bush's second term or so, where life attempts to creep on against constant violence and loss. Drugged out paranoid American soldiers hunting for mythic WMDs, secretive ancient powers in search of much realer mythic artifacts from the pre-Mongol Middle Eastern Enlightenment period, black marketeers (our "heros") attempting to smuggle a wanted ranking Ba'athist for personal gain, fanatics in search opportunities to die for god, doctors prying into the secrets of the genome, a mysterious serial killer, witches, alchemists, ex-intelligence officers, and beautiful poisoners all swirl through a story of truly bizarre ambition. At worst, it risks a kind of Dan Brown / Clive Cussler (I read an embarrassing amount of Cussler as a tween) appropriation of history and culture as plot hooks in service of dubious action sequences, but it's fortunately wilder and better written (in its madcap offhanded way) than either. And the at times disturbingly blaise atrocities that spill out unexpectedly give a sense of the stakes here -- to whatever extend Hossain is able to spin his sources into ridiculous adventures, he's laughing into the void of a truly destroyed nation, building something out of the debris with a black, bitter glee. Dan Brown never grew in canines like these. Last caveats: even I am aware that the Druze are a real (and even politically represented) sect in Lebanon, so the ends their history are turned to here seem a little questionable -- I suppose they're more mysterious and exotic in modern Iraq. And: after all this build up, the endless shoot-out of the finale seemed a bit of a stupid waste of good plotting. Especially because Hossain seems at great pains to leave his characters some space for appearances in the presumed sequel rather than actually realize the full story potential. I'm actually relieved that instead of that, he's since switched gears into a new novel about Bangladesh. Which I would totally read -- interested to see how he may evolve as a writer, despite these reservations.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hoo boy. This is a heck of a ride through occupied Baghdad, following the fortunes of black-marketers Dagr and Kinza. Every description I've read says this book is about their acquisition of a known torturer for Saddam, Captain Hamid--but actually the story turns very quickly to other matters and Hamid simply becomes a grudging third member of their party. Hamid promises them access to hidden treasure, but that search only takes them through a few pages before they're diverted into the pursuit of a serial killer known as the Lion of of Akkad. When they cross paths with a secretive, millennia-old religious sect known as the Druze, things get even stranger.

I loved many things about this book. The writing is great--darkly comic, engaging, gripping, fast-paced, and literate. Hossain convinced me that he understands the complex and confusing history and culture of Baghdad, Iraq, and the Middle East--not to mention the web of American interests now overlaid there. The characters were distinctive and memorable, and the story was satisfying and surprising. I loved the elements of the supernatural, as well as the Dan Brown-esque nods to secret societies, hidden devices, and ancient conspiracies.

Unnamed Press is a small indie that seems to be doing great things. I wish they'd copyedited just a little more closely--there was a section of the book that was laid out incorrectly on the page--but overall this is a great title and I'm grateful to them for bringing it out. Hossain left room for a sequel, and I'd definitely read it (to see poor Dagr get a little happiness, among other things.)

[Faatin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent writing and "world building"...

even though the "world" is essentially ours. this is the story of 3-7 characters through whose eyes we see the current political/economic/war situation in Iraq, but really through the corners of their eyes when it's not misted over with blood. don't be surprised if you start rooting for the most bloodthirsty of them all: I did! in the words of a dear friend, this is a great story about a bunch of men blowing shit up and going on a magical quest. it's also very very very funny. even the darned Glossary made me chuckle.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love that this book starts out as an interesting and darkly hilarious book about mercenaries trying to leave Baghdad and moves into a centuries-old conspiracy and the quest to uncover it. There are so many good one-liners in here, just thrown into the plot, and characters who you can get behind, even though they aren't the kind of people you'd normally want to root for.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Goodreads and the author for giving me this book. This action/fantasy book was a quick read - at times it was hard to put this book down. I particularly liked the glossary at the end of the book.

[Stig Edvartsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a perfect script for the Cohen brothers. More quirk than you can shade an idiosyncratic stick at.

[John Wiswell · Rating 5 out of 5]

It reads like a modern Catch-22. Funny, damning, and will fill your thoughts for days.

[Tee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is hands down, the funniest book I have ever read. It's going to my top 5 of all time, straight.


How Saad Z Hossain isn't the most famous author of all time, I'll never understand. I'm struggling to wipe off my tears of laughter as I read this at the workplace - my co-workers looking on with barely concealed doubt, genuinely concerned about my mental state.


But seriously, though. How long has it been since you've genuinely laughed out loud at every single scene in a book? A mere exhale through the nose is all I've come to in the past couple of years, maybe a handful of laugh-out-loud moments. Here? I'm clutching my stomach, gasping for air as my tummy is rapidly re-arranging itself into laughter-induced abs.


The story is set in war-torn Iraq, with its set of innumerable internal turmoils bravely addressed by the intervention of the US army (re: sarcasm). In a scene that's rife with blood, loss, hunger, economic crisis and just in general war shit, we have our main characters - a trio made up of a lowly street thug, a well-intentioned math professor and a high ranked military torturer held captive by the former duo. 


With these pieces at hand, Saad Hossain just casually proceeds to weave the most funny, dark and absurdist story of war - using mythological tales and science fiction tools to underline just how useless the carnage created by ongoing conflict truly is. 


The writing is sharp, witty, and so visually compelling - it's a blockbuster movie WAITING to be made. The staccato chapters make the narration impactful, sucking us wholly and completely into this madness that S. Hossain has concocted for us. And let's not forget the humor. It's there, and it's here to STAY.


PS: I'm going to do something crazy and not put any quote from the book here. Instead, I'm just going to paste a few lines from the Author's Acknowledgment. 


"- I'd like to acknowledge my family for mocking my literary pretentions at every opportunity and offering no encouragement whatsoever. Also, thanks to my old friends for being ruthlessly sarcastic and forcing me to waste many hours of my life doing random, pointless things. 
- Finally, thanks to Bengal for getting me started. In the off chance that I should become famous, I shall strive to forget all of you as quickly as possible."

[Kaitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

As most satires go, this one was pretty entertaining. Chaos, humor, senseless violence, and vengeance feature heavily in this book. I found the glossary at the back was especially helpful in keeping track of the different factions at war, as well as people. There was a host of interesting characters and weird plot turns that kept me engaged till the end. Personally, Hoffman was one of my favorite characters (he was pretty ridiculous). This was definitely an odd read, but I really enjoyed it.

[Dianthaa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Escape from Baghdad, which was unexpected as on paper I like none of setting elements, urban warfare, guns, military, criminals, not my jam. But the great characters self deprecating humor, general taking things in stride and making light of awful situations, made for a great book.
The speculative elements are very light (as in if I weren't aware it's spec fic it could all still be just myth and rumor for most of the story)

[Daniel Hicklin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Enjoyable characters but genre and rushed plot wasn’t for me.

[モーリー · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my top three novels of the past few years and possibly ever. Just nonstop insanity and delightful writing and characters. There is nothing Hossain and this novel do not do well. Just get it right now and dive in!

[Kristian Bjørkelo · Rating 4 out of 5]

What the hell did I just read? Started slow, but then... Around halfway through shit hits the fan in true John Carpenter fashion. With just enough weirdness to keep me interested.

[Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

a wild ride.

[Kab · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Ryann · Rating 2 out of 5]

An insane book. I won't say I *hated* it, but like, why are we writing that the Druze are hiding the secret to immortality and founded the Iraqi mukhabarat??? An insane choice, especially combined with the setting of the American invasion of Iraq.

[muskan · Rating 4 out of 5]

BAM!!!! hossain, again, with the larger than life speculative mumbo jumbo mixed with batshit characters and hilarious one liners, whats not to like