"Sent by the Guardian to cover the aftermath of the war in Iraq, foreign correspondent Rory McCarthy spent two intense years watching a nation in turmoil. As his understanding of the country grew, so did his sympathy with the dilemmas facing the Iraqi people. Yet he found that their perspective was frighteningly absent from news reports of the conflict drowned out by the message of the American and British occupying powers. There have been many books written about journalists tours of duty in Iraq during the war, or about Western soldiers in Iraq, or about the merit of Western foreign policy towards Iraq and the Arab world. But there has still been no definitive account of this story written from the inside. This book is an attempt to rectify that. ike Anna Funder s Stasiland or the books of Timothy Garton Ash, this is a book that captures the stories of individuals, stories that have been little heard in the West and which tell of a people trying to reckon with what has happened in their past and trying to deal with the violence and frustrations of the present. There is the survivor of one of Saddam s mass graves, and the lawyer trying to prosecute members of the Ba arth party